Nina Grey was born into a Jewish family in Lemberg, Austria-Hungary (now Lviv, Ukraine) in 1907 but in 1915, at the age of eight, Grey and her family moved as refugees to Vienna, Austria, where she grew up, attending the College for Jewish Teachers, embarking on a teaching career, and marrying. In 1939, following the outbreak of war, Grey and her husband immigrated to England where she studied sculpture in London, attending Hornsey School of Art, and then St Martin’s. Often taking the Holocaust as her inspiration, In the 1960s Grey exhibited at Ben Uri and at Foyles Art Gallery, and in 1980 she presented a bronze cast of ‘Flame of Remembrance’ to Yad Vashem (World Holocaust Museum, Israel).
Sculptor Nina Grey was born Janina Gruenberg into a Jewish family in Lemberg, Austria-Hungary (now Lviv, Ukraine) in 1907. The city had a large Jewish community and a long history of war, ranging from sieges by the Cossack forces in 1648, to battles with Russia and Austria in the First World War, and the captivity of its people during the Second. In 1915, at the age of eight, Grey and her family moved as refugees to Vienna, Austria, where she grew up, attending the College for Jewish Teachers, embarking on a teaching career, and eventually, marrying.
In 1939 with the outbreak of war in Europe, Grey and her husband immigrated to England. Grey studied sculpture in London, attending Hornsey School of Art, and then St Martin’s School of Art. She exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts (1958 and 1959) and with the left-leaning Artists’ International Association. She had solo shows at the Ben Uri Gallery (1962) and Foyles Art Gallery (1963), and her work was included in a number of Ben Uri exhibitions. In 1980 Grey presented a bronze cast of her work, Flame of Remembrance, a memorial to the Jews killed during the Holocaust, to Yad Vashem (World Holocaust Museum, Israel), while a plaster version of the sculpture, presented by the artist in 1992, is held in the collection of the Ben Uri Gallery and Museum. In 2018 a discussion around her plaster sculpture Africa in the Ben Uri collection was filmed as part of a schools' learning resource for ArtUK's 'Sculpture in Focus' programme, highlighting the launch of its database of sculpture in UK public collections. Grey's work is represented in the UK at Ben Uri Gallery and Museum and at Jewish Care's Holocaust Survivors' Centre in north London.
Nina Grey in the Ben Uri collection
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Nina Grey]