Eva Aldbrook 1925-2020

Painter, illustrator and costume designer Eva Aldbrook (nee Eva Mehl) was born into a Jewish family on 1 July 1925 in Hamburg, Germany and immigrated to the UK with her family in 1938. She attended Bunce Court - a progressive boarding school in Kent for Jewish refugee children - for one year, meeting there her future husband Alexander Urbach (afterwards Aldbrook), a Viennese refugee, whom she married seven years later. After training as a classical dancer (taking the name Eva Melova), she studied fashion and costume design under Muriel Pemberton at St. Martin's School of Art, becoming a highly successful fashion illustrator in the 1950s and 1960s, celebrated for her elegant, confident designs with commissions from fashion house Dior and publications including British Vogue, The Evening Standard and The Sunday Times. In later years she turned to portraiture and landscapes of the Tuscan countryside, where she spent some years running an olive farm with her husband, later returning to England. She was appointed Vice-Chair of Hampstead Artists Council in 1975 and exhibited at Camden Arts Centre (1975 and 1985) - where she had earlier studied - as well as Hamilton Gallery (1980) and Ben Uri Art Society (1982). In recent years, her work was included in Ben Uri exhibitions: 'Exodus: Masterworks from the Ben Uri Collection (2018) at Bushey Museum, Hertfordshire; 'Finchleystrasse' (2018-19) at the German Embassy, London, and 'Liberators: Twelve Extraordinary Women from the Ben Uri Collection' (2019). Eva Aldbrook died in Oakham, Rutland, in the East Midlands in 2020 at the age of 95.