Scarlet Nikolska was born into a Jewish family in Czechoslovakia in 1949 and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague from 1969–74. Moving to England with her new English husband immediately after graduation, she had her first solo show with Ben Uri in 1975. An expressionist painter and printmaker, her subjects often draw on Jewish ritual and tradition, and the lost ghetto life of Eastern Europe.
Painter Scarlet Nikolska was born into a Jewish family in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic) on 2 June 1949. In 1969 she became a pupil of the Czechoslovak expressionist painter Karel Soucek at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. Graduating in 1974, and with some exhibition exposure in Prague galleries, she immigrated almost immediately to England to marry English academic, Michael Leigh, tutor in International Relations at Sussex University, whom she had met briefly in Prague – despite neither speaking the other's first language.
Following participation in a Brighton College of Art show, and showing work at the Mall Galleries in London, Nikolska was given her first solo show of paintings and lithographs in October 1975 at Ben Uri Art Gallery in Dean Street, supported by a bursary from the Arts Council of England (she is recorded in the ACE annual report for 1975–76 under the name Scarlet Nikolska Leigh). Her subject matter was inspired by Jewish ritual and tradition, and the vanished ghetto life of Eastern Europe – particularly memories of scenes encountered in Prague, Cracow and Budapest – while her strong colourist aesthetic showed affinities with 20th-century Jewish masters, such as Mané-Katz-and Josef Herman, and the Belgian expressionist, Constant Permeke. The catalogue accompanying the Ben Uri exhibition noted that her 'first 25 years were spent in the shadow of what remains of the ghetto in Eastern Europe. Daily contact with the ancient stones of ghetto streets and synagogues made a profound impression on her work' (Scarlet Nikolska, Ben Uri Art Gallery, 1975), while the Daily Telegraph observed that the exhibition reflected 'the history and the spiritual tradition of her Jewish faith through the figures and forms she lived among in the Jewish ghetto [...] a remarkable record of a way of life and thought which is now dying out'. (McLoughlin, 1975). The Jewish Chronicle further acknowledged that 'her broad brushwork, expressive composition and personal sense of colour is typical of the central European Jewish tradition' (Webber, 1975). In 1976 she showed at Gallery 27 in Tonbridge, Kent, Peter Stone, writing in the Jewish Chronicle, reflected that 'her etchings are delicate, sketchy, sometimes with doll-like characters [...] Her oil brushwork is delicate and strong', adding that, 'Now living in Hove she reminds us how expansive and airy, how colourful and wistful, how full of beauty are the Sussex Downs' (Stone, 1976). In 1982 her work was included in an exhibition at Hillel House, London, under the auspices of the Jerusalem (Wembley and District) Women's Lodge of B'nai B'rith, as well as in a group show at Sobell House, the North West London Jewish Day Centre. In June 1985, she participated in a festival of Jewish culture in Brussels, as reported in AJR Information, immediately following an exhibition of her paintings held in April at the city's Alfican Gallery, in which music was a prominent theme, and which was praised by the Brussels' press for its subtle blend of tradition and modernity. In June 1998 her work was featured in Ben Uri's Czech Jewish Artists from the Collection, which included works by a number of émigrés to the UK, including Yehuda Bacon, Naomi Blake, Jacob Bornfriend and Freda Salvendy.
Nikolska has travelled and exhibited widely; her work has been shown in cities including London, Paris, Brussels, Rio de Janeiro, Vienna, Prague, Bologna, Chicago and New York. She settled in Paris in the early 2000s with her second husband, a Romanian-born academic, Pierre Hassner (1933–2018). In 2009 she showed a number of paintings at Claremont McKenna College, California, under the title Pierre's Labyrinth, inspired by the dark interior and piles of paper in her husband's office. Her work can be found in the UK in the collection of the Ben Uri Gallery and Museum.
Scarlet Nikolska in the Ben Uri collection
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Scarlet Nikolska]
Publications related to [Scarlet Nikolska] in the Ben Uri Library