Margarete Hamerschlag

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Self-portrait around 1948
View from (hotel) window , Italy, 1952

Margarete Hamerschlag ( May 10, 1902 in Vienna - April 5, 1958 in London ) was an Austrian craftswoman , author and illustrator .

life and work

Hamerschlag was born in 1902 as the child of the Jewish doctor Richard Hamerschlag and his wife Pauline, b. Heart, born in Vienna. From 1911 (according to other sources as early as 1908) she attended Franz Čižek's youth school class and from 1917 studied at the Vienna School of Applied Arts with Bertold Löffler (printing process), Oskar Strnad (stage design) and Eduard Wimmer-Wisgrill (fashion). Hamerschlag made lithographs for two books that were published by Wiener Werkstätte from 1920. With Kinderfreunde , her second book, she had great success. The portfolios The Mask of the Red Death andThe city showed their virtuoso handling of the woodcut and also attracted attention abroad. At the age of 20 Hamerschlag became a member of the editorial board of Wiener Mode magazine . As a painter, she worked in oils and watercolors. She also designed costumes.

In Rome she staged several plays in Anton Giulio Bragaglia's Theater of the Independents and also furnished them. In 1922 she married the architect and Loos student Joseph Berger . Even after the First World War, women only had the opportunity to exhibit as guests in the artists' associations; membership was still denied to them. In 1927 the 1st Vienna Women's Art Exhibition took place in the rooms of the Museum for Art and Industry , where Hamerschlag showed several works. Fritz Lampl wrote in German Art and Decoration in 1928 : “If she avoids the dangers of playful manual painting exercises, Margarete Hamerschlag will soon be among the best.” Hamerschlag lived from 1924 to 1934 in the artists' colony on the Rosenhügel .

Hamerschlag's husband received an order in Palestine in 1934 , she accompanied him and exhibited in Jerusalem in 1935 . The couple moved to London in 1936, where Hamerschlag worked as a portraitist and book illustrator, and published illustrations in numerous magazines and newspapers. Their son Raymond F. was born in 1937. With the " Anschluss of Austria " the connections to the homeland broke off. Not before the end of the Second World War, Hamerschlag changed her surname to Berger-Hamerschlag and often signed with Berger . She took part in numerous group exhibitions in England. In addition to painting, she wrote novels, short stories , an autobiography . Around 1950 she began to teach in youth clubs and published her experiences there in 1955 in her most famous work Journey into a fog with her own illustrations.

In England she was successful as an artist until her death, but was forgotten at home. In addition, in many encyclopedias, auction catalogs, and even in art-historical treatises, her name was persistently misspelled hammer blow .

Memberships

Works (selection)

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 2019: City of Women. Women artists in Vienna from 1900 to 1938 , Belvedere (group exhibition)
  • 1946: Contemporary European Women Painters in London, group exhibition

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Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Austrian National Library (ed.): Handbook of Austrian authors of Jewish origin: 18th to 20th century . tape 1 AI, p. 501 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed March 3, 2019]).
  2. ^ A b Franz Smola: Margarete Hamerschlag. In: Austrian Gallery Belvedere. October 2008, accessed March 3, 2019 .
  3. ^ Raymond Berger: Margareta Berger-Hamerschlag (1902-1958). Biography. 2015, accessed on March 3, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Hammer blow, Margarete
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Berger-Hamerschlag, Margarete (married name); Berger-Hamerschlag, Margareta (married name); Hamerschlag, Margarethe; Hammerschlag, Margarethe; Hamerschlag, Gretl (nickname); Hamerschlag, Greti (nickname); Hamerschlag-Berger, Margarete (married name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian author and illustrator
DATE OF BIRTH May 10, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH April 5, 1958
Place of death London