Mirka Mora (1928-2018)

Her family was living on Rue de Crimée in Paris in the 1930s and the depression was taking its toll on the young Jewish family with three girls. From the age of four, Mirka would spend weekends and holidays under the charitable governance of their neighbour Paulette. When Paulette had to work, her stepmother Nouzette would watch over Mirka in her charming country home in the south of France.

Nouzette, who was a devout Christian, would secretly teach young Mirka prayers and take her to Church on the weekend despite her parents’ Jewish heritage. ‘At night I slept in Nouzette’s big wooden bed, a large print of the Virgin Mary and the one of Christ with the crown of thorns over his forehead.’1 These formative years in the French countryside made a lasting impression on Mirka; listening to Jules Massenet arias, singing, dancing, the smell of lavender in every room, collecting hazelnuts along the roadside, reading books in the large library with beautiful Épinal prints in classic vibrant red, blue and yellow. A sense of romanticism was awakened and Mirka’s imagination blossomed in those early childhood encounters.

Her family was living on Rue de Crimée in Paris in the 1930s and the depression was taking its toll on the young Jewish family with three girls. From the age of four, Mirka would spend weekends and holidays under the charitable governance of their neighbour Paulette. When Paulette had to work, her stepmother Nouzette would watch over Mirka in her charming country home in the south of France.

Nouzette, who was a devout Christian, would secretly teach young Mirka prayers and take her to Church on the weekend despite her parents’ Jewish heritage. ‘At night I slept in Nouzette’s big wooden bed, a large print of the Virgin Mary and the one of Christ with the crown of thorns over his forehead.’1 These formative years in the French countryside
made a lasting impression on Mirka; listening to Jules Massenet arias, singing, dancing, the smell of lavender in every room, collecting hazelnuts along the roadside, reading books in the large library with beautiful Épinal prints in classic vibrant red, blue and yellow. A sense of romanticism was awakened and Mirka’s imagination blossomed in those early childhood encounters.

This blissful, albeit hand-to-mouth, existence was soon interrupted by the looming war. For a large family, it was difficult to escape unnoticed. Even with the underground intelligence Mirka’s parents had from their involvement in the Jewish Resistance, rumours were rife. Mirka, her mother and her sisters narrowly avoided Auschwitz. Through a series of chance events her father was able to locate them and intervene just in time. After many more terrifying moments eluding capture, Mirka and her family fled Paris. Nouzette took care of her for a while, at great personal risk, until the whole family was able to find a suitable hideaway. Mirka ‘spent her girlhood years hidden in the forest, emerging a mistress of invention untainted by formal education.’2

Mirka discovered a way of handling her traumas through art, producing beautiful imagery to heal the sadness and simultaneously invoke her joie de vivre. Her work often defies definition in terms of any singular ethos, however a strong thread of spirituality is always present in the vast expanse of Mirka’s painted universe. ‘I tend to be a maker of images, my eternal images. Eternal because they are so simple - children together, often holding or surrounded by birds or dogs, a sky, a tree, a fence, the faint suggestion of a faraway landscape.’ 3. Mirka’s subjects share one vital element whether a rock, tree, animal or human; they are ablaze with her enduring lightness of being and playful spontaneity.

Sarah Garrecht

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1. Mirka Mora, My Life: Wicked but Virtuous, Penguin Random House,
Australia, 2000, p. 6
2. Barbara Blackman, Glass after Glass: Autobiographical reflections,
Viking Publishing, Melbourne, 1987, p. 170
3. Mirka Mora, My Life: Wicked but Virtuous, Op cit, p.113

View Mirka's works in the auction catalogue.