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§ (British & European Fine Art | Live Online, 4th December 2020) MARIE-LOUISE VON MOTESICZKY (AUSTRIAN 1906 - 1996) Property from the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust MARIE-LOUISE VON MOTESICZKY (AUSTRIAN 1906 - 1996) Still-life with inkpot, ashtray and matches oil on canvas 30.4 x 66.1 cm (12 x 26 in) LITERATURE: Ines Schlenker, Marie-Louise von Motesiczky 1906-1996, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, New York, 2009, p. 313, no. 175, illustrated Painted in 1960-61. The artist's choice of a narrow horizontal canvas suggests a debt to Max Beckmann The format was one that the German painter often deployed when painting still-lifes, as it allowed him to imbue apparently humdrum items spread out across the canvas with enigmatic meaning. In like style, as well as the items in the title, Marie-Louise includes an open book, two feathers and a biro. Although an apparently prosaic selection, the book and quills in particular may well be a reference either to her relationship with the writer Elias Canetti, or to her late brother Karl. Property from the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust (lots 820 - 827) Viennese emigré artist Marie-Louise von Motesiczky (1906-1996) parted with few of her works during her lifetime, and since her death less than a handful have appeared on the open market. Lots 820 - 827 span four decades - from 1945 to the early 1980s - and mark the first time a group of her paintings is to be offered at auction. Marie-Louise lived in Vienna until the Anschluss in 1938, when Austria was annexed by Germany and she and her Jewish mother were forced to emigrate to England in 1939. The primary influence on her art was the German painter Max Beckmann whom Marie-Louise had first met in her early ‘teens in 1920. She recalled: ‘A winged creature from Mars could not have made a greater impact on me’. From the early 1920s, she attended classes in different studios across Europe and she and Beckmann kept in regular contact. He visited her in Paris, and she accepted his invitation to attend his masterclasses in Frankfurt. During these formative years Marie-Louise enjoyed a privileged life. Her mother Henriette was scion of an illustrious Viennese Jewish banking dynasty. Her maternal grandfather, Leopold von Lieben, was President of the Stock Exchange; her grandmother, Anna, one of Freud’s early patients. She counted the Todescos, and Ephrussis among her family circle. Growing up in an apartment on Brahmsplatz in central Vienna, she, her mother and her brother Karl spent their summers at Villa Todesco in Hinterbrühl, south west of the capital. But over time family tragedy, financial difficulties and above all the rise of Nazi Germany took their toll. Marie-Louise’s father had died in a hunting accident many years before and her mother’s considerable inheritance gradually diminished through a combination of high taxation, ill-advised investments, and the financial crash of 1929. Then, with the rise of the Third Reich she and her mother felt compelled to flee Austria. Further distress followed when her brother Karl, who had remained in Austria, was arrested and deported to Auschwitz, dying of typhus there on 25 June 1943. Immediately following the Anschluss Marie-Louise and her mother travelled to Holland where she renewed contact with Beckmann, living in Amsterdam. Then, in January 1939, she and her mother emigrated to Britain. In London she reconnected with Oskar Kokoschka a family friend in Vienna but now similarly exiled. Kokoschka ensured that her work was shown in a series of group exhibitions, culminating in a one-person exhibition at the Czechoslovak Institute in the autumn of 1944. Whilst on the Continent Beckmann had informed Marie-Louise’s distinctive aesthetic, evident in her use of bold compositional forms, commanding characterisation, strong lighting and vivid colours. But in London Kokoschka’s influence also began to infuse Marie-Louise’s work. Her palette softened, her brush strokes became li