Mirka Mora facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Mirka Mora
Mora in 1961
Born	Mirka Madeleine Zelik (1928-03-18)18 March 1928 Paris, France
Died	27 August 2018(2018-08-27) (aged 90) Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Nationality	French, Australian
Education	Self-taught
Known for	Painting, Sculpture, Mosaics
Awards	Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres

Mirka Madeleine Mora (18 March 1928 – 27 August 2018) was a French-born Australian visual artist and cultural figure who contributed significantly to the development of Australian contemporary art. Her media included drawing, painting, sculpture and mosaic.

Early life

Mirka Mora was born on 18 March 1928 in Paris to a Lithuanian Jewish father, Leon Zelik, and a Romanian Jewish mother, Celia Gelbein. She was arrested in 1942 during the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup (Rafle du Vel' d'Hiv). Her father, Leon, managed to arrange for her release from the concentration camp at Pithiviers (Loiret) before Mora and her mother were scheduled to be deported to Auschwitz. The family evaded arrest and deportation from 1942 to 1945 by hiding in the forests of France. After the war, 17-year-old Mirka met a wartime resistance fighter Georges Mora in Paris. They married in 1947.

Migration to Australia

Having survived the Holocaust,Mirka Mora and her husband migrated to Australia in 1951 in order to settle in Melbourne. They chose Melbourne over Casablanca or Saigon because Mirka had read about it in Henri Murger's novel Scènes de la Vie de Bohème, in which a young Parisian photographer (probably based by Murger on Antoine Fauchery) makes regular trips to Melbourne to make his fortune. They occupied studios in Grosvenor Chambers in the 'Paris End' of Collins Street, and quickly became key figures on the Melbourne cultural scene. Mirka worked initially as a dressmaker while also making art, and Georges became an influential art dealer, in 1967 with his flair and entrepreneurship adding the Tolarno Galleries to Melbourne's only very select number of commercial art galleries.

The Mora family also owned and operated three significant Melbourne cafés. The Mirka Café was opened by Jean Sablon in December 1954 at 183 Exhibition Street and was the venue for the first major solo exhibition by Joy Hester. It was followed by the Café Balzac at 62 Wellington Parade, East Melbourne and then by the Tolarno in Fitzroy Street in St Kilda, which opened in 1966, and where Mirka created a bas-relief behind the bar and painted murals on walls and windows of the restaurant and bistro, hallway and toilets, over the period 1965 to 1978. All three were focal points for Melbourne's bohemian subculture. As Mora's son Philippe recalls, "my parents literally fed artists at our home and in our restaurants".

The Mora family's social circle included many progressive Australian artists and writers: Charles Blackman and Barbara Blackman, Fred Williams, John Perceval, Albert Tucker, Barrett Reid, Laurence Hope, Arthur Boyd and Joy Hester. The Mora family were especially close friends with renowned art patrons John and Sunday Reed, and spent many weekends at their famous home and artists' colony "Heide" (now the Heide Museum of Modern Art) in the Melbourne suburb of Bulleen, and at the Reeds' beach house next door to the Moras' own in Aspendale.

Mora had three children who were to find their place as a film director, Philippe Mora, an art dealer, William Mora, and an actor, Tiriel Mora. "Culturally privileged" is Philippe's epithet in describing their childhood. After extramarital relationships on both sides, Mirka eventually separated from Georges.

Teaching

For many years Mora conducted workshops in painting, soft sculpture and mosaics, where countless Australians learned from her unique approach to teaching art. She travelled also to France, the USA and Japan to present her workshops.

Later life and death

Mora lived and worked in a number of studios in Melbourne, including Rankins Lane. Mora appeared as an interviewee on the ABC's conversational television programs Agony Aunts and The Agony of Life in 2012 and 2013. In 2016 Mora, for a long time a contributor of design to the fashion industry, collaborated with Australian fashion company Gorman to launch a 23 piece collection based on four artworks. Her murals survive on the walls of the Tolarno restaurant and gallery she previously owned in St. Kilda.

In 2016, an East Melbourne bar-owner uncovered a lost mural on the wall of his establishment, previously the Café Balzac.

Mora died, aged 90, at her home in Melbourne on 27 August 2018. Her life was celebrated in a State Memorial, attended by over 1200 people at the Palais de Danse, a landmark for her in St.Kilda. She was the first female artist to receive a Victorian State Memorial.

Honours

In 2002, Mora was made an Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture and Communication. Mirka Lane in St Kilda, off Barkly Street near the intersections of Grey and Inkerman Streets was named after the artist.

Exhibitions

Mora's first public showing was of three circus clown paintings on masonite at Tye's Gallery in their commemorative exhibition of the Contemporary Art Society by 86 of its members 6–23 April 1954 She went on to have more than 35 solo exhibitions throughout her career, most in five galleries; the Contemporary Art Society, Heidi Museum of Modern Art, Douglas Galleries, Tolarno Galleries, and Watters Gallery. An important retrospective Mirka Mora: where angels fear to tread: 50 years of art 1948–1998 was held at Heide Museum of Art 1999–2000 to celebrate 50 years of her work. Mirka Mora: Charcoals 1958–1965 featured in the Melbourne Art Fair 2018, from 2–5 August, just prior to her death.

Other exhibitions include:

• Mirka Mora paintings 1966–2012, 1–5 August 2012, Melbourne Art Fair, Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne
• Mirka Goes West, July 2009, Short St Gallery 7 Short Street, Chinatown, Broome WA.
• Women at Watters, (group show) 22 February 1995 – 11 March 1995, Watters Gallery, East Sydney, NSW
• Mirka Mora, 1990, Arthouse, Launceston, Tasmania, An exhibition of 42 oil paintings, drawings and embroideries.
• Exhibition of painted fabrics and dolls, 29 August – 12 September 1979, at the David Jones Art Gallery, 6th floor, Elizabeth Street, Sydney.
• Annual Special Christmas Exhibition (group show), December 1986, Solander Gallery, 36 Grey Street, Deakin, ACT.
• Embroideries of Mirka Mora, 1978, Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, Ballarat, VIC
• Drawing exhibition (group show with John Perceval, Noel Counihan, Arthur Boyd), 24 February – 23 March 1977, Realities Gallery, Toorak, Melbourne, Vic.
• Project 20: Fabric Art, September 1977 – 9 October 1977, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW
• Mirka Mora: Paintings: 'The Finding of Erichthonius' June 1968 – 22 June 1968, Watters Gallery, Sydney, NSW
• Drawings by Mirka Mora. November 1968, Australian Sculpture Gallery, 1 Finniss Crescent, Narrabundah, NSW.
• Paintings by the Aleph Group (group show by Australian Jewish artists), 4–11 October 1964, Studio Nundah, Canberra.
• Foyer exhibition with Charles Blackman and Arthur Boyd, 26 March 1954 at the opening of "The Bachelor", Arrow Theatre
• Contemporary Art Society exhibition, opened 6 April 1954. Tye's Gallery. This was the first CAS exhibition since 1947 (the revival due to efforts by the Moras and Reeds) and Mirka Mora's first Australian show

Motion pictures and audio

• Mirka Mora at the Australian National Film and Sound Archive

Collections

See also

• Art of Australia
• List of Australian artists