Ivor Weiss was born in Stepney in the East End of London to Romanian-Jewish immigrant parents in 1919. His studies at the Northampton Road Polytechnic were curtailed by the outbreak of the Second World War and he served with the British Eight Army, principally in North Africa and Malta. During this period he attended the Bardi Studio in Cairo, then the Malta School of Art, gaining first prize for figure drawing. Afterwards, upon his return to London, Weiss studied briefly at Heatherley’s School of Art, then at St. Martin’s, where he met and married a fellow student Joan Dare in 1948. After graduation in 1950, the couple immigrated to the USA, settling in Alabama, where they ran inter-racial art classes, supplemented by mural and mosaic design commissions for commercial clients and art dealing. In 1955 they returned to England and Weiss carried out a number of commissions including enamelled jewellery for Harrods and Heals and stained-glass windows for the Stock Exchange in Johannesburg, South Africa. His wide range of media and techniques also encompassed oils, watercolour, mosaics, murals, drawings, linocuts, stained glass and textiles. In the mid-50s Weiss also became an art teacher in Brighton and later Brightlingsea, Essex, later relinquishing teaching for art dealing. In 1965 the Weiss’ established their first gallery in Colchester, Essex. Weiss had the first of several solo exhibitions with the O’Hana art gallery, Mayfair, in 1963, and a retrospective at the Ben Uri in 1980.