In this performance, set in Lapa, Rio – a neighbourhood famed for its architectural monuments and Bohemian culture – a veiled figure crosses the foreground pulling a house behind her. Ates’ practice explores concepts of displacement, particularly the notion that we carry our ‘mental home … wherever we go’. She writes of her practice, ‘An exploration into the bewildering experience of displacement lies at the heart of my work. I engage with the potential of pattern and motif within Islamic art: layers held within lavish architectural spaces, offering cover or exposure, alluding to the theatrical. My work begins with film and photography, yet with a subsequent layering of imagery – resulting in a disruptive blur of cultural perceptions. The idea of ‘the veil’, which sits at the core of my art practice, is thus compounded. Manifestations of this are realised through performance and site-responsive activities that merge Eastern and Western sensibilities’.
The
Artist
Artist Güler Ates was born in Muş, Eastern Turkey in 1977, and immigrated to Britain in around 2001. She graduated from the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London in 2008 with an MA in Printmaking before being appointed a digital print tutor at the Royal Academy Schools. She has also held visiting lecturer posts at Sheffield Hallam University and the University of Hertfordshire, among other institutions.
Ates’ multidisciplinary work encompasses video, photography, printmaking, and performance through which she explores contemporary experiences of identity, diaspora and cultural displacement. In her photographic series, the concept of the veil plays a pivotal role: using only natural light, she places fully veiled female figures in different contexts, including a 16th-century English university library, the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, and the City Palace Museum in Udaipur in India. These continually changing contexts represent and examine the definition of the exotic that merges Eastern and Western sensualities. The veil is a garment as much as a concept, a metaphor, a mystery, expressing what
is invisible, silent or holy. It forms part of a poetic language revealing and concealing the body. In the artist’s own words, ‘The figures in these works inhabit the places in a ghostly manner. The allusion is both to invisibility and visibility’ (Times of India). By working with Islamic motifs and patterns overlaid on the fabric worn by these veiled women, Ates combined elements from Middle Eastern exoticism from her own heritage with those representing Victorian propriety. She explained: ‘In my art, I deal with the journey that I took from Istanbul to London, exploring female identity and displacement, which also is autobiographical’ (Varsha Naik 2012).
Ates has exhibited frequently at the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, as well as in many solo exhibitions in the UK and internationally from 2010 onwards. Her work has been featured in numerous groups shows including New Contemporaries Archive Films, ICA (2010), 2Q13: Women Collectors, Women Artists, Lloyds Club, London (2013), Journey at the Jewish Museum, London (2015), Unexpected: Continuing Narratives of Identity and Migration, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, London (2016) and Migrations: Masterworks from the Ben Uri Collection at Gloucester Museum (2019). Ates has also completed residencies in India (2012 and 2009), Rio de Janeiro (2013–2014), Istanbul (2014) and at Eton College, Berkshire (2015, which led to a solo exhibition in 2018), and the London District of the Methodist Church (2019). Güler Ates continues to live and work in London. Her work can be found in UK public collections including the Ben Uri Collection, the Government Art Collection, the Royal Academy of Art and the V&A, as well as in MAR in Rio de Janeiro, among others.
Guidance notes on Women Artists
Margarete Marks
Composition, c. 1960
by Margarete ‘Grete’ Marks (1899-1990)
Ceramic tiles, 46 x 46 cm
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Marks’ boldly-coloured, experimental ceramic engages with postwar abstraction. Born into a Jewish family in Cologne, Germany, Marks studied as a ceramicist under Itten at the Bauhaus, going on to establish a highly successful pottery factory with her first husband, Gustav Loebenstein, in 1923, from which her progressive designs were exported to prestigious clients including Heal’s and Liberty in England. After her husband’s death in 1928, she continued running the factory until 1934, when she was forced to sell it, far below its value, to a member of the Nazi party. Marks left for Britain in 1936, helped by her connections to Ambrose Heal’s export manager. Initially, she worked for Minton Pottery where she continued to produce her own radical, avant-garde designs, but was unable to recapture her earlier success with a more conservative British audience. Marks continued her creative career, concentrating on painting, drawing and lithography, but continuing to experiment with ceramics.
The
Artist
Ceramicist and painter Margarete Marks (née Heymann) was born in 1899 to a wealthy Jewish family in Cologne, Germany. Her daughter, Frances, has described her life in exile in England as ‘an upper class German woman living in working class London’ (Camden New Journal, 5 April 2007). She studied painting at the College of Applied Arts (Kunstgewerbeschule) in Cologne and the Academy of Fine Arts (Akademie der Bildenden Künste) in Düsseldorf, before joining Johannes Itten’s progressive preliminary course at the Weimar Bauhaus in 1920. The following year she was accepted onto a trial term at the ceramics workshop directed by Gerhard Marcks, while also attending courses taught by Georg Muche, Paul Klee and Gertrud Grunow. Although Marks left the Bauhaus early, in autumn 1921, its teachings had a lasting impact on her work. In 1923, together with her husband, Gustav Loebenstein, Marks founded the Haël Workshops for artistic ceramics in Marwitz, near Berlin, from which her distinctive designs were exported to prestigious clients in America and the UK, including Heal’s and Liberty stores in London, thus bringing Bauhaus
modernism into the British domestic sphere. After her husband’s death in a car accident in 1928, Marks continued to run the business until 1934, when the Nazis forced her – as a Jew –to sell the factory (which had employed over 100 staff at its peak) at a price far below market value, to a member of the party. Her own works were labelled ‘degenerate’ by the regime.
Marks subsequently travelled to Palestine, visiting potteries in Jerusalem, as part of an unsuccessful attempt to relocate her business, before immigrating to Britain in 1936, helped by connections to the export manager at Heal’s store in London. Moving to Stoke-on-Trent, the centre of the UK ceramics’ industry, she initially taught at Burslem School of Art and worked for the renowned Minton Pottery, where one of her own avant-garde forms was reproduced, but she was unable to recapture her earlier commercial success, faced with a more conservative British audience. The Bloomsbury Gallery, London held a solo exhibition of her work in 1938 and in July of the same year, one of her watercolour landscapes was featured in the final section (‘Artists now working in England’) in the Exhibition of Twentieth Century German Art, held at the New Burlington Galleries, as a riposte to the Nazi’s Degenerate Art exhibition of 1937.
Following her second marriage to Harold Marks in 1938, Marks founded her own studio, Greta Pottery (with studio mark ‘GP’) which she had to close in 1940. Her daughter Frances was born in 1941. At the end of the war, Marks resumed ceramic production in her studio and studied painting, drawing and lithography at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts, London. Postwar, Marks had one woman exhibitions at the Redfern Gallery (1954) and Roland, Browse & Delbanco (1956). Marks also lectured on From Bauhaus to Minimal Art as part of Ben Uri’s winter lecture series in 1979. Marks also produced silverware and designed two large-scale murals for office buildings in Bradford in 1960 and 1966 (the 1960 mural has been relocated and is on view at City House, Cheapside, Bradford). Margarete Marks died in London on 11 November 1990.
Guidance notes on Women Artists
Clara Klinghoffer
Orovida Pissarro, 1962
by Clara Klinghoffer
(1900-1970)
Oil on canvas, 102.2 x 86.8 cm
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Klinghoffer painted a number of celebrated sitters including Vivien Leigh as Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, and her friends Lucien and Orovida Pissarro. Her striking portrait of Orovida, Camille’s granddaughter, and herself an artist, presents Orovida as a series of ample forms including her rounded belly and face framed by her cropped pudding-basin hairstyle playfully echoed in the curves of the chair, the jug, plates, fruit and ornaments all forming a sinuous and slightly comical backdrop. The patterning of her skirt strikes a lone note of slightly controlled geometry.
The Sitter
Orovida Pissarro was born in 1893 in Epping, Essex, England, the only daughter of the Jewish émigré painter Lucien Pissarro, and granddaughter of the Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro. She began drawing and painting at an early age and was the first woman in the Pissarro family to become a professional artist.
She lived and worked predominantly in London, where she was a prominent member of several British arts clubs and societies. She first learned to paint in the Impressionist style from her father and briefly studied with Walter Sickert in 1913; however, she soon abandoned formal art education and began experimenting with etching. Early on she became absorbed with the study of animals at London Zoo, depicting them in the style of their countries of origin combined with modernist elements, such as daring perspective and unconventional composition. Her early works in tempera are typically painted on delicate materials, such as fine-woven linen and silk.
Throughout her career, Orovida always remained outside mainstream British art movements; she was greatly influenced by an exhibition of Chinese Paintings held at the British Museum in 1924 and developed a personal style that combined elements of Japanese, Chinese, Persian, and Indian art. Her rejection of both Impressionism and her surname - she was known simply as Orovida - reflected her wish to achieve independence from the painting legacy of the
Pissarro dynasty, however, she remained proud of the family connection.
During the Second World War, she had to abandon her London studio for the countryside, Suffolk. It was during this period that she took up oil painting again due to a shortage of egg tempera and shifted towards contemporary subjects, such as scenes of rural and postwar urban life. Orovida remained active until the end of her life and died at home in London, England in 1968.
The Artist
Clara Klinghoffer was born into a Jewish family in Szerzezec, near Lwów, Polish Galicia (now Lviv Ukraine) in 1900. She moved to England with her family at the age of three, settling first in Manchester, before moving to London’s East End. She drew from a young age, briefly taking classes at the John Cass Institute in Aldgate in 1914, before moving to the Central School of Arts and Crafts, and she quickly established a reputation as the new ‘girl genius’, gaining a bursary to the Slade School of Fine Art (1918–20). While still a student, she held her first exhibition at the Hampstead Art Gallery in 1920. Further solo exhibitions at prestigious London galleries followed, where her drawings, especially studies of women and children (often based on her six sisters) were frequently likened to Raphael.
In 1926 she married Dutch journalist Joop Stoppelman and moved with him to Paris in 1928. and to Holland two years later. In 1939, aware of the imminent threat of German invasion, the family moved again, this time to America, settling in New York, where Klinghoffer continued exhibiting. In her later years, however, her work suffered from the decline in demand for figurative painting. Clara Klinghoffer died in London, England on 18 April 1970.
Guidance notes on WomenArtists
Zory Shahrokhi
Revolution Street 2, 2019
by Zory Shahrokhi
(1963- )
Mixed media on paper, 58.5 x 82.8 cm
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This is one of two related works of the same title that form the artist’s commissioned response to the exhibition, Liberators: 12 Extraordinary Women Artists from the Ben Uri Collection (2018). The title of both pieces refers to ‘the Girls of Enghelab (Revolution) Street’ movement, started in central Tehran in 2018, after a woman removed her headscarf in protest against the compulsory wearing of the hijab. The swallow - a symbol of freedom also utilised in the artist’s installation, Flying (2015), is here shown within a diamond-shaped headscarf. The companion piece features six fabric swallows made from scraps of Persian cloth sent to the artist from friends and relatives in Iran.
Shahrokhi says of her work: ‘I grew up in Iran and as a result my work is strongly influenced by Persian poetry, fabric and rug design. When still I was a teenager – a couple of years after the 1979 revolution – I lost almost all the people dear to me. They were imprisoned, missing or executed due the government’s crackdown on the opposition. The traces of those events are reflected in my work. I experiment with traditional art techniques combined with new technology while through abstract expression practice I investigate issues and perceptions around freedom related to displacement, exploitation, and gender oppression. Experiencing the dehumanisation of refugees and the ongoing struggle to be part of this society naturally is part of my work.’ (Traces online project).
The Artist
Visual artist Zory Shahrokhi was born in Tehran, Iran in 1963 and later immigrated to England after the 1979 revolution. She studied art at London Metropolitan University and at the University of Hertfordshire. Her practice developed through a concern in exploring cultural/political agendas, employing performance in relation to installation and photography. She explores a wide range of media processes as well as sculpture and time-based imagery, working with abstract representations of the human body to communicate literally and metaphorically, using domestic objects such as safety pins, spoons,
cloth, rose blossoms, and hair. While her artistic expression is influenced by her background, it is also concerned with more universal issues around the contemporary human condition and breaches in human rights. She is primarily interested in the issues and perceptions around displacement, exploitation and gender oppression.
Shahrokhi has exhibited widely with galleries including the Foundling Museum, Norwich Art Centre, and Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art. Her work has also been included in numerous group exhibitions, including ‘Unexpected: Continuing Narratives of Identity and Migration’ (Ben Uri Gallery, 2016), ‘Refuge and Renewal: Migration and British Art’ (the Royal West of England Academy, 2019) and ‘Migrations: Masterworks from the Ben Uri Collection’ (Gloucester Museum, 2019). In 2018 she was commissioned by Ben Uri to respond to the exhibition ‘Liberators: 12 Extraordinary Women Artists from the Ben Uri Collection’, creating two related artworks, both entitled ‘Revolution Street 2’ (now in Ben Uri Collection) exploring issues of freedom, identity and migration. In May 2022 she undertook a Residency at Edinburgh Printmakers. She lives and works in London.
Guidance notes on Women Artists
Elizabeth Tomalin
Head, c. 1928-34
by Elisabeth Tomalin (1912-2012)
Gouache on paper, 51 x 36.1 cm
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Elisabeth Tomalin’s boldly-coloured head, elaborately constructed in pastel and gouache facets, was created during her studentship at Berlin’s progressive Reimann Schule, where she studied from the late 1920s until 1934. It takes inspiration from tribal masks and enamels, which she studied under noted Professor K H Rosenberg; also studying textile art and decorative painting with Erna Hitzberger. After immigrating to the UK, Tomalin brought both aspects of her training together, becoming a colour consultant at Heal’s and a successful designer in the British textile industry, setting up her own designs in a number of colourways. This process is anticipated in her choice of different colours for the two sides of her subject’s face, hair and background.
The Artist
Textile designer and art therapist, Elisabeth Tomalin (née Wallach) was born to a wealthy Jewish family in Dresden, Germany on 4 October 1912, the youngest of four children. She despised her parents’ bourgeois lifestyle and she moved to Vienna, distancing herself from her family. Through her much older boyfriend, Ernst Wagner, anthroposophist and art teacher, she developed an interest in Jungian psychology, which became a life-long fascination. She attended the first Eranos conference in Switzerland in 1933 and at this time started using a mysterious invented name, ‘Suaja’ for herself. Encouraged to pursue a career in art, Tomalin enrolled in Berlin’s progressive, Jewish-owned Reimann Schule, where she was influenced by her enamelling tutor, Professor K H Rosenberg, particularly in her distinctive approach to colour, and in understanding the design potential of mandalas and batiks. With the rise of Nazism the School was forced to close, and Tomalin left without formal qualifications. Fleeing Germany alone in 1936, she arrived in London without a visa, unable to find suitable employment; unlike many of her female peers, she would not countenance the unhappy alternative of arriving on a domestic visa.
Taking temporary refuge in Paris, she took on enough ‘black market’ work to create a portfolio and was then readmitted to Britain as a ful-
ly-fledged designer, securing work with Barlow & Company in Manchester, manufacturer of printed silks, before the war affected the production of luxury goods. In 1939 she met Miles Tomalin, journalist, poet, musician, and former International Brigade fighter, at a refugee soup kitchen where he was working (and she was eating). His family owned the clothing firm, Jaeger, but were unable to employ her. Miles divorced his first wife, Beth Tomalin, and married Elisabeth on 25 July 1940, thus sparing her the indignity of internment. During the war Tomalin worked in the practice of modernist architect Ernő Goldfinger, and at the Exhibitions department of the Ministry of Information. Her daughter, Stefany, was born in 1945; several portraits of mother and daughter were taken by renowned émigrée photographer (and spy), Edith Tudor-Hart (see Ben Uri Collection). By May 1948, Tomalin was employed by Alexander Felgate in his silk printing business, who then introduced her to Marks and Spencer, where she was appointed head of the new textile print studio from 1949, designing fabrics for colourful ‘New Look’ dresses for the masses.
As the main breadwinner, Elisabeth was restless, driven, critical and ambitious, while Miles found it difficult to secure permanent employment. Around 1956, having parted amicably, the couple moved into separate flats in a new block designed by Goldfinger on Regents Park Road. During the 1960s, having left M&S Tomalin variously worked as a furnishing colour consultant at Heal & Son; a freelance designer of wrapping paper for J. Royle; for Slumberland; and as a textile designer for Ramm Son & Crocker. Her interest in psychology remained, and after retiring from the commercial world in her sixties, she retrained as an art therapist in New York with her childhood friend, émigrée Ruth Cohn, who ran the Workshop Institute for Living Learning. She returned regularly to Germany to work with patients and trainees, eventually publishing on her methods, and assisting in establishing one of the first accredited post-graduate qualification for art therapists in Germany. Elisabeth Tomalin died on 8 March 2012 in London, England.
Guidance notes on Women Artists
Girl with a Cat (2000)
by Julie Held (1958-)
Oil on canvas, 101.8 x 75.7 cm
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Julie Held’s Girl with a Cat is a poignant synthe-sis of expressive figuration and emotional inte-riority, emblematic of the artist’s long-standing engagement with memory, identity, and human vulnerability. Executed in loose, gestural brush-work and a muted, melancholic palette dominat-ed by coral-pink and slate blue, the composition isolates the solitary figure against an ambiguous, dreamlike background. The girl’s downcast eyes and closed expression suggest a quiet introspec-tion, while the cat she holds —rendered in quick, tactile marks—becomes both a companion and a mirror of the figure’s inner world.
Held, a London-born artist and the daughter of German-Jewish émigrés, draws deeply from per-sonal and inherited histories. Trained at Cam-berwell and the Royal Academy Schools, she blends classical draftsmanship with modernist expressiveness, often exploring themes of exile, belonging, and relational silence. This painting, which was acquired by the Ben Uri in 1991, ex-emplifies her nuanced sensitivity to psycholog-ical states and domestic symbolism. The cat, frequently a motif of intimacy and ambiguity in modern painting, here becomes a conduit for connection—both emotional and composition-al.
Held’s subtle palette and flattened spatial con-struction evoke influences ranging from German Expressionism to contemporary portraiture, po-sitioning her within a lineage of postwar British artists who use figuration to explore inner life with restraint, dignity, and complexity.
The Artist
Julie Held was born in London, England in 1958, the daughter of German-Jewish émigrés who fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s; her mother, Gisela Held, was a professional sculptor. Held trained at Camberwell School of Art (1977-81), followed by a post-graduate diploma at the Royal Academy Schools (1982-85). She is the recipient of a number of awards including the Picker Fellowship, Kingston University, where she had her first solo show in 1982, and her painting “Girl with a Cat” was purchased by Ben Uri Jewish Artist of the Year Award in 1991. She held a solo show at Ben Uri Gallery in 1996, followed by a joint exhibition with Shanti Panchal in 2007. She has also held solo exhibitions in Prague, Leipzig and Hamburg.
Held’s solo show, Living London, at Eleven Spitalfields Gallery, London (2014), was followed by a joint exhibition with her former tutor Tony Eyton (2017), and a further solo exhibition at the London Jewish Culture Centre (2015). She regularly exhibits at group exhibitions includ-ing the Royal Academy summer exhibitions, The Jerwood Drawing Prize, and the B.P. Portrait Award. Held is a visiting lecturer at the Roy-al Drawing School in London. She was elected a member of the Royal Watercolour Society in 2003 and is also a member of the London Group, the New English Art Club and the Arborealists. Julie Held’s work is in UK public collections in-cluding the Ben Uri Collection; Nuffield College, Oxford University; the Open University; the Ruth Borchard Portrait Collection; the Usher Art Gallery, Lincoln; and The Women’s Art Collection, Murray Edwards College, Cambridge University, as well as The Thomas Choir School, Leipzig.
Guidance notes on Women Artists
Portrait of Mama Gimol by Bettina Caro (1955-) Oil on canvas, 60 x 50 cm
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Painter Bettina Caro was born to a Sephardi family in Casablanca, Morocco, in 1955. She is a direct descendant of Rabbi Yosef Caro (1488-1575), author of the Shulchan Aruch, and cites her ancestry, her upbringing in North Africa, and her family’s Sephardi traditions as the key themes in her paintings. Her father, she recalls as ‘a keen amateur painter, [who] encouraged me to express myself through paint from the moment I could hold a brush. It was he who taught me how to use linseed oil to create a blurred effect’. In 1973 Caro moved to Spain to study art and architecture at the University of Madrid, then settled in London in 1981.
Caro primarily paints landscapes of the Mediter-ranean and the Holy Land, but has also received major portrait commissions. In 1992 she was invited to paint a portrait of Juan Carlos I, then King of Spain, as part of the commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the country’s expulsion of their Jewish population. She exhibited with Ben Uri Gallery’s Open exhibitions in 1985-1987, 1991, 1998 (Open Exhibition of Works by Contemporary Female Jewish Artists), and in 1999; as well as in the International Jewish Artist of the Year Award (IJAYA) in 2004 and 2006; she was runner-up in 2012. In 2010 she was commis-sioned by the Board of Deputies of British Jews to create a series of paintings to celebrate their 250th anniversary, published in a commemo-rative volume. Two of the works are now in the Board of Deputies Collection. She has had two retrospectives at the London Jewish Cultural Centre (LJCC) in 2011 and 2014. In 2018 she had a solo exhibition at the Centro Sepharad-Israel in Madrid. Bettina Caro lives and works in London. She is represented in the Ben Uri Collection, North-wood and Pinner Liberal Synagogue, the S&P Sephardi Synagogue and the Israeli Embassy in London, as well as the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal
The Artist
This regal portrait by Bettina Caro reveals the artist’s deep engagement with Sephardi identi-ty, memory, and ancestral legacy. Executed with rich, textured brushwork and an opulent palette dominated by gold and deep purples, the paint-ing depicts a dignified woman adorned with elaborate jewellery and traditional dress, her di-rect gaze evoking both authority and introspec-tion. The use of gold leaf or gold-toned pigment in the background and adornment is reminiscent of both religious iconography and the medieval illuminated manuscript tradition, suggesting a reverence for lineage and spirituality. Caro, a London-based Moroccan-born Sephardi artist, draws upon her North African upbring-ing and distinguished descent from Rabbi Yosef Caro to inform her visual language. While she is best known for her Mediterranean landscapes, her portraits— such as this—communicate a profound sense of cultural continuity. The work’s frontal composition and flattened spatial depth recall Byzantine portraiture, while the expressive treatment of fabric and flesh reveals her fluency in Western painting traditions learned during her time in Madrid. This painting operates not only as a likeness but as a cultural artifact—an homage to Sephardi re-silience, female dignity, and historical presence. It situates Caro within a transnational Jewish ar-tistic tradition that bridges geographic displace-ment with spiritual rootedness.
Guidance notes on Women Artists
Naomi Alexander
Tea Time at Wimbledon (1990) by Naomi Alexander (1938-)
Oil on board, 40 x 60 cm
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Naomi Alexander’s vibrant painting captures a moment of leisure with a rich interplay of colour, texture, and atmosphere that reveals her com-mand of painterly expression and compositional sophistication. The scene—an outdoor café, suf-fused with Mediterranean light—is dominated by a striking parasol in red and white, radiating out behind the central female figure in a tur-quoise hat. This parasol becomes both a formal and symbolic focal point, drawing the viewer into a theatrical tableau of social interaction, elegance, and reflective calm. The brushwork is gestural yet controlled, blending figuration with a semi-impressionistic treatment of surface and light. Alexander, trained in both fine art and conser-vation, brings a technically nuanced approach to her depiction of fabric, architecture, and skin, informed by an understanding of Old Mas-ter techniques. The subject matter—women in public, absorbed in quiet contemplation or conversation—recurs throughout her oeuvre, often refracted through her Jewish heritage and diasporic awareness. While this work exudes a cosmopolitan glamour, there is also a meditative stillness to it, suggesting themes of observation and interiority. This painting reflects Alexander’s deep en-gagement with colour and narrative space, fus-ing lived experience with formal invention. It demonstrates her ability to transform everyday scenes into painterly meditations on identity, memory, and aesthetic pleasure.
The Artist
Naomi Alexander was born into a Jewish family in Harpenden, England in 1938; her mother was the sculptor Hazel Alexander. Naomi trained as a painter, print-maker and textile designer at Horn-sey College of Art and then took a post-graduate course at the Central School of Art, London. She also trained as a picture conservator, thus gaining knowledge of the techniques of the Old Masters. In 1998 she was invited by the late Duke of Devonshire to paint the attics of Chatsworth House. Other important commissions include a monu-mental version of “MacMillan in the House of Commons” for Sir Richard Storey in 1990, and other paintings for the Sultan of Oman and Eu-gene Datal of Salamon Brothers, New York. In 2002 she was appointed artist in residence at the Europas Parkas Museum in Vilnius. Her work can be found in collections including that of the Duke of Devonshire, Baker Tilly (London) the Japanese Broadcasting Association and in collec-tions in Israel and Lithuania. She lives and works in London.
Guidance notes on Women Artists
Anneke Coster Chair
(2008)
by Anneke Coster (1950-)
Paint on aluminium, 21.7 x 15.2 cm
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Anneke Coster’s vibrant multi-panel work pre-sents a systematic yet playful investigation into the mundane ritual of draped clothing on chairs. Comprising twenty small, brightly coloured compositions, each panel depicts a solitary chair adorned with garments, accessories, or domes-tic objects, set against sharply contrasting back-drops. The repetition of the motif—a chair in the corner of a room —suggests both seriality and variation, evoking themes of time, routine, and personal presence through absence.
Coster, trained in both fine art and architecture, brings a spatial and structural sensibility to her practice, here manifest in the formal clarity and compositional consistency of each vignette. The bold, flat colour planes and silhouette-like ren-dering recall the aesthetics of Pop Art and colour field painting, while the subject matter engages with the quiet poetry of domestic life. The chair, a surrogate for the absent figure, becomes a site of narrative potential—each arrangement sug-gesting an unspoken story, a trace of activity, or a moment of transition.
This work speaks to Coster’s broader interdisci-plinary practice, which spans media and often explores the intersection of personal memory, material culture, and architectural space. In this series, the everyday is elevated to a meditative visual language that is at once intimate, formal, and universally recognisable.
The Artist
Anneke Coster was born Anneke Raber in Am-ersfoort, Holland in 1950. She spent 25 years in London, where she studied for a BA in Fine Art, and an MA in Architecture. She later moved to Zurich, Switzerland and currently lives in Jerusalem, Israel. She draws on diverse subject matters and materials, and her practice includes drawing, sculpture, site specific installation, vid-eo, photography and ceramics.
Guidance notes on Women Artists
Estelle Lovatt
In the Shade by
Estelle Lovatt (1963-)
Charcoal and pencil on paper, 15 x 23.5 cm
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Estelle Lovatt’s charcoal drawing of a female nude demonstrates a profound sensitivity to gesture, form, and emotional presence, characteristic of her practice as both a trained painter and art his-torian. Rendered in expressive, energetic strokes, the figure emerges from the page with a sense of immediacy and dynamism. The bold, sweeping marks are offset by areas of delicate smudging, suggesting movement, breath, and the ephemeral nature of bodily perception. While the anatomical features are loosely articulated, the drawing captures the psychological weight of the pose—a figure simultaneously grounded and in flux. Lovatt, educated at Harrow School of Art and the Byam Shaw School, brings a rigorous under-standing of classical figuration to this modernist exploration of the nude. The drawing balances structure and abstraction, echoing the influence of 20th-century British expressionists while re-maining deeply personal. Her art historical train-ing is evident in her handling of chiaroscuro and the confident negotiation of negative space. This drawing can be seen as a meditation on presence and interiority, locating the nude not as object but as subject. Lovatt’s experience as a critic and educator also informs her visual lan-guage— analytic, intuitive, and rich with layered references—making this work both a formal ex-ercise and a deeply felt act of observation.
The Artist
Painter Estelle Lovatt was born in London in 1963 and trained at Harrow School of Art (1981–82) and Byam Shaw School of Art (1982–83). Later, she read Art History and also worked as a teacher and as a curator. She was a member of the Ben Uri Arts committee between 1991 and 1993 and is currently a freelance art critic for the BBC (both TV and radio). She exhibited at the Royal Academy, the Royal Festival Hall and the Mall Galleries.
