Hilda Goldwag was born to a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria Hungary (now Austria) in 1912 where attended Anna Schantruch's Art Classes for gifted artistic children, later graduating from the Graphische Staatsämter und Versuchs Anmalt in 1938. Following the Anschluss (Nazi annexation of Austria), Goldwag secured a travel permit to Scotland in March 1939 and spent the rest of her life in Glasgow, working as a textile designer, freelance illustrator and painter.
Painter, draughter, and designer Hilda Goldwag was born to a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria Hungary (now Austria) on 28 April 1912; her artist father, Moses, died when she was nine. She attended Anna Schantruch's Art Classes for gifted artistic children and, aged 14, helped paint murals for the new St. Leitner Kindergarten. She graduated from the Graphische Staatsämter und Versuchs Anmalt in her home city with special commendation in 1938.
Following the Anschluss (Nazi annexation of Austria), Goldwag managed to secure a travel permit to Scotland in March 1939 to work as a domestic for a minister of the Church of Scotland in West Linton; tragically, the rest of her family perished in the Holocaust. In 1939, while in Edinburgh, she met fellow refugee and lifelong friend Cecile Schwarzchild, whom she painted on numerous occasions. Following the outbreak of the Second World War, they relocated to Glasgow, settling in Hill Street near Garnet Hill Synagogue, and undertaking war work as turners at McGlashlan's engineering works. Postwar, Goldwag was appointed head designer at Friedlander's in Hillington, designing scarves for Marks & Spencer (1945–55). Afterwards, she worked as a freelance illustrator for Collins Publishers, producing illustrations for Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses (1955) and a number of distance language learning publications. She later worked as a part-time occupational therapist at Forresthall Hospital (1962–75). Goldwag resumed painting and exhibiting in the 1950s, working principally with oils and a palette knife on board, and mostly working outside in situ, carrying both paintings and materials with her on the local buses. Her subjects included the nearby Forth and Clyde Canal, the tenements and warehouses of Cowcaddens, and, from the 1980s, exuberant flower pieces, panoramic farm landscapes, waterscapes, and 'imagined' figure paintings.
Goldwag exhibited in Gourock, Greenock, and at the Lillie Art Gallery, receiving awards from the Glasgow Society of Women Artists, and was a professional and exhibiting member of the Scottish Society of Women Artists, Paisley Art Club and Milngavie Art Club. In 2005, the exhibition Hilda Goldwag's Glasgow was organised at the Collins Gallery, Strathclyde University. In 2007 she donated her oil, The Wheel, referencing machine parts, to Ben Uri's permanent collection.
Hilda Goldwag died in Glasgow, Scotland on 28 January 2008. Her work is held in UK public collections including Ben Uri Collection, Strathclyde University and the Scottish Jewish Archives Centre (which also houses archival materials relating to the artist's life). Her work was exhibited posthumously at the Hidden Lane Gallery in Glasgow in 2010, 2012 (including a 2012 display of her sketches and drawings recovered from a dustbin outside her house by a waste collector after her death) and 2017. In 2018 her collection work featured in Ben Uri's survey exhibition Out of Austria: Austrian Artists in Exile in Great Britain 1933-45.
Hilda Goldwag in the Ben Uri collection
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Hilda Goldwag]
Publications related to [Hilda Goldwag] in the Ben Uri Library