Michael Schreck was born in Tarnow, Austria-Hungary in 1901. After moving to England in 1938 following the Anschluss, he was interned as an enemy alien during the Second World War, contributing to exhibitions by interned artists. After his release, he became known for his portraits, landscapes, and modernist sculptures, later moving to Canada and the USA, where he exhibited widely.
Painter and sculptor Michael Schreck was born to Orthodox American-Jewish parents in Tarnow, Austria-Hungary (now Poland) on 13 July 1901. He held American citizenship until 1929, when he applied for naturalisation in Austria. Interested in art from an early age, he was educated in Tarnow and Vienna and later studied fine art in the Austrian capital until 1923 when, upon his father’s death, he took over the family business manufacturing ladies’ clothing. From 1934–38 he frequently visited England on business and in 1935 he established Vienna Fashions Ltd, manufacturing dresses of Viennese design in Holborn, London. Following the Anschluss (Nazi annexation of Austria) in March 1938, Schreck moved permanently to England, renaming his company Michael Henry Limited.
Following the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 and the introduction of internment for so-called ‘enemy aliens’ in May 1940, Schreck was interned, first in the notorious Warth Mills camp outside Bury, Greater Manchester, where he produced a sketch detailing the appalling conditions entitled Agony (1940, Ben Uri Collection). The work shows a single internee slumped over the end of a wooden bed in a large room with broken windows, crumbling walls and sparse belongings hanging from nails and hooks. While the physical environment is starkly portrayed, the painting’s power lies in its evocation of the mental anguish and despair experienced by Schreck and his fellow internees, abruptly torn from their families and livelihoods. Schreck’s fellow artist internees included Peter Midgley (né Fleischmann), who described the experience as a ‘nightmare’, and Hermann Fechenbach, who went on hunger strike as a result. Schreck was subsequently interned in Onchan Camp on the Isle of Man, where further artist inmates included Jack Bilbo, Henry de Buys Roessingh, Ernst Eisenmayer and Hermann Nonnenmacher. He contributed drawings on numerous occasions to the camp publication The Onchan Pioneer (August 1940–April 1941), and exhibited drawings and watercolours at the Interned Artists Exhibition held at Bilbo’s Cabin in August 1940 and in the Art and Christmas Card Exhibition (October–November 1940). In April 1941 he also held a solo show of portraits of fellow internees; among his subjects were Austrian-Jewish businessman Ernst Urbach (whose son Alexander married refugee artist Eva Aldbrook), as well as John Duffield MA, Vicar of Onchan, who took a great interest in the internees and lectured at the informal Camp University. Schreck’s wife and children were also interned (1940–41) in a separate camp on the Isle of Man. The family was released in November 1941 on condition that Schreck took employment as export manager with a clothing manufacturer in London W1, where he worked on commission, settling in Hampstead Garden Suburb and carrying out local fire-watching duties for the rest of the war. His company Michael Henry had ceased trading during his internment, but after 1942 he attempted to revive it, employing his wife as secretary at £2 a week.
Despite being granted naturalisation in 1948, Schreck left shortly afterwards for Canada and began his art career in earnest. He remained in Canada until the late 1950s, settling in Outremont, Quebec in 1953. He exhibited at the Museum of Fine Art, Montreal (1953–56) and the Dom Gallery, Montreal (1954–56). He continued to make excursions to and create networks within continental Europe and in 1949 visited Paris, meeting Fernand Leger and Andre Lhote; he later exhibited at the Museum of Art Modern, Paris, in 1964 and in the same year was awarded the Grand Prix International at Deauville and a ‘Mention Grand Finale’ at the Prix International de Vichy. He received the Prix Rencontre International, Chateau de Senou, France in 1965. He also visited Italy and became a member of the Accademia Italia. In the late 1950s Schreck immigrated to the USA.
Schreck's work encompassed portraits, landscapes and abstracts, as well as sculpture in modernist marble and Brutalist bronze. His commissions included a Mexican mural at Thomaston, New York (1969), and a piece for the R. Gimbel sculpture garden, New York; he also became a member of The American Federation of Arts. He exhibited at Jersey City Museum, New Jersey (1959), held a solo exhibition at the Selected Artists Gallery, New York (1961), and later participated in group shows at the Gloria Luria Gallery, Miami, Florida, and the Dominion Gallery, Montreal, in the 1970s. He received the City of Hollywood Appreciation Award for the Masada Monument, unveiled in May 1974 at Temple Sinai. A book on Schreck’s sculpture (authored by Alfred Werner) was published by the University of Miami Press in 1975. Michael Schreck died at his home in Hollywood, Florida, USA, on 2 August 1999. In the UK public domain, his work is represented in the Ben Uri Collection. In 2019, his portrait of Ernst Erbach (1940) was included in Ben Uri’s exhibition Out of Austria, featuring work by Austrian artists who found refuge in Great Britain during the era of National Socialism.
Michael Schreck in the Ben Uri collection
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Michael Schreck]
Publications related to [Michael Schreck] in the Ben Uri Library