Feature Review:London | Berlin | WHEN Pamina Liebert-Mahrenholz was interned in Holloway Prison

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Published: 18 September 2008

Liebert-Mahrenholz self-portrait detail

A tale of two cities Berlin and London

WHEN Pamina Liebert-Mahrenholz was interned in Holloway Prison, her artistic drive was such she turned her daily bread ration into sculptures.
She had fled Germany in 1936 as the Nazi terror became more and more pronounced – but then spent over two years in captivity in Britain, being taken from the Camden Road prison to the Isle of Man.
Now a new exhibition, hosted by the Boundary Gallery, displays Mahrenholz’s paintings alongside her compatriot Margaret Marks.
The pair never met, both were artists working in Berlin in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and both forced to seek safety in the UK.
After her release Mahrenholz earned a living restoring china before returning to sculpture and painting.
Marks trained as a ceramicist at the influential Bauhaus and then established one of Germany’s leading potteries, whose clients in the UK included Liberty and Heal’s.
Pressure to Aryanise successful German businesses meant she was forced to sell the company she set up in 1934 and flee to London. Marks settled and continued to work in pottery, bringing her expertise to Britain and having her first UK solo show at the Bloomsbury Gallery in 1938.
l The Ben Uri Gallery has a retrospective of self-portraits by Robert Lenkiewicz.
Lenkiewicz was born in London in 1941. His parents ran a hotel in Fordwych Road, West Hampstead and its rooms were often inhabited by people who had fled Nazism.
He studied at St Martins and the Royal Academy.
His self-portraits consider how he had changed over the years – and how his own perception of himself had also altered.

• Two Berliners at the Boundary Gallery, Boundary Road, NW8,
September 26 to October 25. 020 7624 1126.
Robert Lenkiewicz at Ben Uri Gallery, Boundary Road, NW8,
September 26 to November 16. 020 7604 3991

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