Meta Dachinger (née Gutmann) was born into a Jewish family in Nuremberg, Germany in 1916, and studied under the painter Georg Hublitz in 1931. After Hitler came to power, in 1933 she continued her art studies, first in Switzerland then Italy, and then, around 1937–38 in London in the studio of pioneering art teacher, emigre Arthur Segal. In 1939 she relocated permanently with one of her sisters to England, where she enrolled at the University of London; following her marriage to fellow refugee, interned artist Hugo Dachinger in 1943, and the birth of their son, she continued to exhibit, including with the Ben Uri Gallery.
Painter Meta Dachinger (née Gutmann) was born into a Jewish family in Nuremberg, Germany in 1916, studying under the painter Georg Hublitz in 1931. After Hitler came to power, in 1933 she first went to Switzerland and then to Italy, where she continued her studies at the Turin Art Academy under Giovanni Grande, producing mainly still lifes and portraits. In ca. 1937–38 she received art classes in the studio of Arthur Segal in London. In 1939 she relocated permanently with one of her sisters to England, where she enrolled at the University of London.
During the Second World War she lived for a period in Llanfairfechan, North Wales, returning to London in 1942. She became a member of the Artists’ International Association (AIA), a British and pro-Soviet association founded in 1933 which took an early interest in refugees from Germany and Austria; she also participated in the Free German League of Culture (FGLC, a left-leaning organisation supporting German-speaking refugees), contributing the painting Liverpool Evacuee to its members’ exhibition in 1942. In February 1943 her oil painting Welsh Landscape was featured in the Artists Aid Jewry Exhibition, which was organised jointly by the FGLC, Austrian Centre (AC), and Jewish Cultural Club at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London. The same year, she married fellow refugee artist Hugo Dachinger in Hampstead, London, with Austrian émigré, and former internee, Wilhelm Hollitscher as witness. As Meta Gutman, she participated in the 1944 FGLC Exhibition of Drawings, Paintings & Sculptures by Free German Artists. Dachinger specialised in watercolours and exhibited her work in a number of Ben Uri exhibitions, including the Exhibition of Portraits by Contemporary Jewish Artists (1945) and Exhibition of Painting & Sculpture by Contemporary Jewish Artists (1946), but like many refugee women artists who had a family (she had a son, Peran Dachinger, born the year of her marriage, who later became a picture restorer and art and antiques dealer, and a daughter, Miriam, born c. 1946); Dachinger's postwar career in exile remained somewhat diminished. She sat to her husband for a number of portraits, including when pregnant and with a young child, which presented her in a range of styles from tender expressionist to semi-abstract. She also coined her husband's nickname, 'Puck', inspired by the Shakespearian character of the same name in Midsummer's Night Dream.
Meta Dachinger died in London, England in 1983. The same year, a memorial exhibition was held at Fischer Fine Art in St. James's, the London gallery established in the 1960s by Harry Fischer, a Viennese émigré art dealer, who had previously worked at Marlborough Fine Art with Frank Lloyd, and which was continued by his son Wolfgang into the early 1990s. Dachinger's work will be included in the exhibition Refugees from National Socialism in Wales to be held at the Aberystwyth Arts Centre in Autumn 2022, as a part of a larger project exploring the hidden stories of émigrés who, following the rise of National Socialism, found refuge in Wales in the 1930s and 1940s. Her work is not currently held in any UK public collections.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Meta Dachinger]
Publications related to [Meta Dachinger] in the Ben Uri Library