Georg Mayer-Marton (Born 1897, Győr, Hungary, died 1960, Liverpool, England), was a significant figure in Viennese art between the First and Second World Wars [1] working in oil, watercolour and graphics. Following his forced emigration to England in 1938, he continued to paint in watercolour and oil. He pioneered the technique of Byzantine mosaic in the U.K.
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Mayer-Marton was born in Hungary in 1897, and grew up during the final years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He studied art at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. He settled in Vienna, and in 1927 became Secretary, later Vice-President, of the leading progressive society of Viennese artists, the Hagenbund. In 1928 he provided illustrations in the Chinese style for "Der Kreidekreis" ("the Circle of Chalk") by Klabund.
In 1938 following the Anschluss of Austria and the enactment of Hitler’s Nuremberg laws, he and his wife fled to England. In 1940, during the London Blitz, his studio home in St John’s Wood was burnt by an incendiary bomb. The majority of his life's work and personal possessions was destroyed. He was not in a position to paint in oil again until 1948.
In 1952, he took up the post of Senior Lecturer in the department of painting at the Liverpool College of Art. He executed a number of mosaic commissions from the Roman Catholic Church, decorating schools and churches in the North West of England, including the Pentecost mosaic, now in the Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral.
He died from leukemia in August 1960, leaving several of his mosaic designs unfinished.
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Georg Mayer-Marton homepage [1]
Imperial War Museum - "Unspeakable" exhibition [2]