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Joy fills the room in rare Mirka Mora exhibition

Jmedia Manager
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There’s something special about Mirka Mora’s work that makes it a rare sight on the auction block, according to her son William Mora.

The Jewish Museum of Australia is exhibiting the largest display of works by the Melbourne artist and Holocaust survivor, which may be the best chance the public has to see them, as private owners are reluctant to let go of works that Mora said were about seeing good in humanity, hope and resilience.

MIRKA draws on Mora’s 70-year career through more than 250 works including paintings, sketches, diaries, letters and recorded interviews from the Jewish Holocaust Centre archives, to present a large-scale show of the artist in a relatively small space.

“It’s a magnificent show; this life story as well as showing some of her major paintings haven’t shown before,” Mr Mora said. “There’s so much richness in the show that everything has an interest. If you come it informs you how Mirka’s work developed and seeing her life story alongside that.”
The French-born artist was born to a Lithuanian Jewish father and a Romanian Jewish mother. She was sent to the Pithiviers concentration camp, south of Paris, when she was 14 but managed to escape and lived out the war in hiding before moving to Australia in 1951 with her husband.
Read the article by Tessa Akerman in The Australian.