Ghisha Koenig was born in Kensington, London in 1921, the daughter of the Yiddish writer and art critic Leo Koenig. She studied variously at Hornsey School of Art, under Henry Moore at Chelsea School of Art, and at the Slade School of Fine Art. Best known for her small scale realist bronzes and terracotta in high relief, her concern with the human condition and a 'desire for anonymity' prompted her to choose workers in factories as her principle subject.
Sculptor and draughtswoman Ghisha Koenig was born in Kensington, London on 8 December 1921, daughter of the Yiddish writer and art critic Leo Koenig, who was closely associated with Ben Uri in its first decades, and an actress in Yiddish theatre. Growing up in an impoverished, yet stimulating and political milieu, the family home was the centre of a circle of Jewish artists and writers, including the painters Josef Herman and David Bomberg, who became role models. In 1939 she won a scholarship to Hornsey School of Art, leaving in 1942 to begin war service with the ATC (Air Training Corps). Postwar, she studied under Henry Moore at Chelsea School of Art (1946–48) and then at the Slade School of Fine Art (1948–49) under sculptor, F. E . McWilliam. She later recalled that Moore: ‘made me furious because he said it was vulgar to like Rodin, and Rodin was my hero. Despite that, he was a marvellous teacher and gave us a sense of the tremendous seriousness of art, and the realization that there were no short cuts’ (Taylor 1984, p. 1).
Koenig mainly created small-scale realist bronzes and terracottas in high relief, staining the latter 'with dark ink prior to burnishing them to restore the clay’s richness' (David Buckman). Much of her oeuvre focused on factory workers, whom she observed for over 40 years. Koenig wanted to draw the human figure but could not afford professional models, and her concern with the human condition and a desire for anonymity prompted her to choose workers as her principle subject. She commented: ‘after Hitler, the dignity of man had to be re-established’ (Brett 1986, p. 4). Over the course of her career, she visited a total of six factories, including the industrial estate at St Mary's Cray in Kent (where Koenig's husband helped set up a group medical practice) and the Peek Freans biscuit factory in Bermondsey, south London. Although endowing them with individuality, she nonetheless maintained a personal detachment from her subjects. In the solitude of her studio, first in Kent and for the last nine years in Camden Town, north London (previously occupied briefly by Naum Gabo (Jewish Chronicle, 1994)), she worked in terracotta from sketches, often spending up to two years on one project. For her series The Tent Makers (1978–80, one example held at the Graves Gallery, Sheffield), depicting workers who produced tents for an Everest expedition, she produced five reliefs, the largest of them 1.5 metres wide, together with five figures in the round.
In the 1960s she participated in several group exhibitions at the Grosvenor Gallery in London, including Sculpture For The Home (1963). The Times noted that her ‘terra cotta bas-reliefs strike an attractive balance between subject (the Rag Trade) and formal qualities of design’ (The Times 1963, p. 14). In 1966 she had her first solo exhibition at the Grosvenor, displaying 25 sculptures. The show was well-received by the public, and several pieces were purchased by the Ministry of Works, Centre 42 (Arnold Wesker's trade union group), and Homerton College for teacher training at Cambridge. Koenig also participated in several survey exhibitions including Jewish Artists in England, at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1956, the same year she began participating in the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition. She also exhibited with the left-leaning Artists’ International Association (AIA) and at the Sculptural Biennale, while her work also featured with Ben Uri, including in the opening exhibition at Berners Street in 1961 and Ben Uri 50 Fiftieth Anniversary Special Exhibition(1966). In 1986 she had a retrospective jointly at London's Serpentine Gallery and the Boundary Gallery, showing terracotta and bronzes of factory workers. The Tribune noted that these studies were 'a response to the rhythm and tension of work, rather than realistic models […] these are the works of an artist whose subject is literary 'the human clay', and whose approach combines social realism and humanism' (Cooper 1986, p. 9). Between 1985–86 Koenig worked on a commission for a school for the blind in Sevenoaks in Kent. She lived at the school for nearly three months and the three resulting reliefs were mounted so that the children could 'see' her work through touch. Despite her Jewish identity, Koenig's also worked on a church commission, her modern interpretation of the Crucifixion, with Roman centurions replaced by Nazi storm-troopers, hanging above the high altar of St John the Divine at Earlsfield in south west London.
Ghisha Koenig died at University College Hospital, Camden, London on 15 October 1993. A memorial show was held at the Boundary Gallery in 1994. Her work is held in UK public collections including the Ben Uri Collection, Tate, Graves Gallery, Sheffield, The Women's Art Collection, Murray Edwards College and the Henry Moore Institute (HMI), Leeds (the latter also holds her sketchbooks and press cuttings in the archives). In 2001 Ben Uri featured her work in The Ben Uri Story from Art Society to Museum. In 2017, the HMI presented Ghisha Koenig: Machines Restrict their Movement, bringing together drawings and sculptures made between 1951 and 1985, exploring Koenig’s commitment to sculpting industrial labour.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Ghisha Koenig]
Publications related to [Ghisha Koenig] in the Ben Uri Library