Biography
George Mayer-Marton, also known as Georg or Gyuri, was born in 1897 in Győr, Hungary. He was raised during the final years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in an agnostic family. His youth was marked by two years of service in the trenches during the Great War. Mayer-Marton pursued art studies at the Academies of Vienna and Munich. By 1927, he married and settled in Vienna, where he held positions as Secretary and later Vice-President of the progressive society of artists, the Hagenbund.
Throughout the challenging interwar period, Mayer-Marton emerged as a pivotal figure, gaining widespread recognition for his artistic contributions and receiving public honors in Austria and beyond. However, with the rise of the Nazis and the implementation of Hitler’s race laws in 1938, he and his wife, a talented pianist, were compelled to flee to England as destitute refugees.
In 1940, during the Blitz, Mayer-Marton’s studio home was destroyed by an incendiary bomb, resulting in the loss of most of his life’s work and personal possessions. His wife, deeply affected, never fully recovered mentally. For the next twelve years, he engaged in itinerant lecturing for the Arts Council, facing personal and artistic challenges. Financial and logistical constraints prevented him from returning to oil painting until 1948, resulting in the loss of nearly thirty years of artistic output. Nevertheless, the continuity evident in his watercolors provided a glimpse of the extent of that loss.
Following the death of his wife in 1952 and a period of redundancy after Arts Council reorganization, Mayer-Marton seized the opportunity to become Senior Lecturer in the painting department at the College of Art in Liverpool. This move marked a turning point, leading to a resurgence of prolific artistic output, particularly in oil painting and, for the first time, in face mosaic—a technique he had studied in Ravenna three decades earlier. The course he initiated at the College was the first of its kind in the U.K. Mayer-Marton’s civilizing influence, broad vision, deep understanding of Art History, and technical skill as a practicing artist are fondly remembered by his former students.
His enduring passion for music was evident in his paintings and mosaics, both in subject matter and in the chromatic use of color, as well as his keen sense of structure and form in landscapes. In 1957, all these elements converged in the creation of the Pentecost Mosaic, widely recognized as his masterpiece. George Mayer-Marton passed away from leukemia in August 1960, leaving behind a legacy that continues to be appreciated and remembered.
Find out more about George Mayer-Marton and his work here