OTHER NAMES: MARGARETE HEYMANN, MARGARETE HEYMANN-LÖBENSTEIN (LOEBENSTEIN), MARGARETE HEYMANN-MARKS, GRETE MARKS, MARGARET MARKS
Ceramicist and painter Margarete Marks (née Heymann) was born into a Jewish family in Cologne, Germany on 10 August 1899. She studied painting at the College of Applied Arts, Cologne and the Academy of Fine Arts, Düsseldorf, before joining Johannes Itten’s preliminary course at the Bauhaus in Weimar in 1920, then studying ceramics under Gerhard Marcks, leaving in autumn 1921. In 1923 she established a highly successful pottery factory with her first husband, Gustav Loebenstein, from which her progressive designs were exported to prestigious clients including Heal's and Liberty in England. After her husband's death in 1928, Marks continued running the factory until 1934, when the Nazis forced her to sell it, far below its value, to a member of the party. She travelled to Palestine, visiting potteries in Jerusalem, before immigrating to Britain in 1936, helped by connections to the export manager at Heal's store in London. In Stoke-on-Trent she taught at Burslem School of Art (holding a solo exhibition in 1937) and worked for Minton Pottery, where she continued to produce her own radical, avant-garde designs but was unable to recapture her earlier success with a more conservative British audience. She held a solo exhibition at the Bloomsbury Gallery, London in 1938 and in July was included in the Exhibition of Twentieth Century German Art, held at the New Burlington Galleries, London; she married Harold Marks the same year. She also founded her own studio, Greta Pottery (with studio mark 'GP') which closed in 1940. Thereafter, she concentrated on painting, drawing and lithography. Further solo exhibitions followed at the Redfern Gallery (1954), Roland, Browse & Delbanco (1956); and at Ben Uri Gallery in 1953, 1960 (Mosaics, Paintings, Drawings), 1970 (joint show with Henry Sanders), and a retrospective in 1979; also showing in numerous group exhibitions.
Margaret Marks died in London, England on 11 November 1990. Posthumuous exhibitions have been held at venues including Hael Pottery, Velten, near Berlin (2006) and a joint exhibition with Pamina Liebert-Mahrenholz at the Boundary Gallery, London (2008). Her work was also included in various survey shows including Forced Journeys: Artists in Exile in Britain, c. 1933-45 (Ben Uri Gallery, London; Sayle Gallery, Isle of Man; Williamson Art Gallery, Birkenhead, 2009-10).
Marks' work is held in UK collections including Abbot Hall, the Ben Uri Collection, the British Museum, the Royal Festival Hall, Stoke-on-Trent Museum, and the V&A, as well as in international collections in Berlin (including the Bauhaus Archiv), Brandenburg and Munich in Germany; and New York and Illinois in the USA.
