Mirka Mora

The recorded working language is French and English. The field of work recorded is painting. Work by Mirka Mora is recorded in the collections of National Gallery of Victoria and National Gallery of Australia. Distinctions recorded are Officer of Arts and Letters.

• Name — Mirka Mora • Birth Name — Mirka Madeleine Zelik • Born — 18 March 1928 • Birthplace — Paris, France • Died — 27 August 2018 • Place of death — Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Field — Painting, Sculpture, Mosaics • Training — Self-taught • Awards — Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres

Mirka Mora was born on 18 March 1928 in Paris to a Lithuanian Jewish father, Leon Zelik, and a Romanian Jewish mother, Celia Gelbein. She was arrested in 1942 during the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup (Rafle du Vel' d'Hiv). Her father, Leon, managed to arrange for her release from the concentration camp at Pithiviers (Loiret) before Mora and her mother were scheduled to be deported to Auschwitz. The family evaded arrest and deportation from 1942 to 1945 by hiding in the forests of France. After the war, 17-year-old Mirka met a wartime resistance fighter Georges Mora in Paris. They married in 1947. In an interview in 2004, Mora said: I really wanted to make love to him, because I was very humiliated that he didn't because I was 17, and he said, "I know that you are not happy but we have to wait till we get married." "Ah! Married?" So I agreed to get married to lose my virginity. That's true.

Having survived the Holocaust, Mirka Mora and her husband migrated to Australia in 1951 in order to settle in Melbourne. They chose Melbourne over Casablanca or Saigon because Mirka had read about it in Henri Murger's novel Scènes de la Vie de Bohème, in which a young Parisian photographer (probably based by Murger on Antoine Fauchery) travels to Melbourne to make his fortune. They occupied studios in Grosvenor Chambers in the 'Paris End' of Collins Street, and quickly became key figures on the Melbourne cultural scene. Mirka worked initially as a dressmaker while also making art, and Georges became an influential art dealer, in 1967 with his flair and entrepreneurship adding the Tolarno Galleries to Melbourne's only very select number of commercial art galleries. The Mora family also owned and operated three significant Melbourne cafés. The Mirka Café was opened by Jean Sablon in December 1954 at 183 Exhibition Street and was the venue for the first major solo exhibition by Joy Hester. It was followed by the Café Balzac at 62 Wellington Parade, East Melbourne and then by the Tolarno in Fitzroy Street in St Kilda, which opened in 1966, and where Mirka created a bas-relief behind the bar and painted murals on walls and windows of the restaurant and bistro, hallway and toilets, over the period 1965 to 1978. All three were focal points for Melbourne's bohemian subculture. As Mora's son Philippe recalls, "my parents literally fed artists at our home and in our restaurants". In a 2004 interview, Mora stated: The Mora family's social circle included many progressive Australian artists and writers: Charles Blackman and Barbara Blackman, Fred Williams, John Perceval, Albert Tucker, Barrett Reid, Laurence Hope, Arthur Boyd and Joy Hester. The Mora family were especially close friends with renowned art patrons John and Sunday Reed, and spent many weekends at their famous home and artists' colony "Heide" (now the Heide Museum of Modern Art) in the Melbourne suburb of Bulleen, and at the Reeds' beach house next door to the Moras' own in Aspendale. Mora had three children who were to find their place as a film director, Philippe Mora, an art dealer, William Mora, and an actor, Tiriel Mora. "Culturally privileged" is Philippe's epithet in describing their childhood. After extramarital relationships on both sides, Mirka eventually separated from Georges.

Perceptions of Mora's work have evolved against the background of the Australian art scene and its changing levels of sophistication. Donald Brook, in reviewing the 1964 Paintings by the Aleph Group describes Mora's work as one of only two that were 'distinctively Jewish'. Patrick McCaughey in 1967 emphasised the 'magical' qualities of her art; Her fantasies are not an escape from the world but a way of participating in it. They redeem it from mundaneity [sic], transforming it into a magical zone where we may glimpse an angel walking unaware or a bird comforting a girl...they enhance it for us with their compassion, gentleness and sympathy. Robin Wallace-Crabbe, in his 1968 Canberra Times, critique 'Giving away high-mindedness' of Mora's show at the Australian Sculpture Gallery, Narrabundah, hints that though 'delightful' her work is naïve, "like a mixture of May Gibbs' 'Snugglepot and Cuddlepie' and the prevailing Melbourne style in the early fifties", while later, in 1981, Sonja Kaleski is more favourably analytical in her review 'Vibrant, Volatile Artist', in The Canberra Times: Mora's works and commentary on them have appeared in Australian Drawings by Elwyn Lynn, New painting, 1952–62 by John Reed, The Vital Decade by co-authors Geoffrey Dutton and Max Harris, and the Encyclopedia of Australian Art by Alan McCulloch. When Mora showed with Jean Dubuffet and Francois Mezzapelle in In Pursuit of Fantasy opening 18 October 1997 at George Gallery 129 Fitzroy Street, St. Kilda, Melbourne, the French language Le Courrier Australien reported that the vernissage was attended by 800 people, and described her work; Heidi curator Kendrah Morgan in a 2011 education kit listed Mora's wide range of influences:"from the theatrical traditions of the Surrealists and the Comédies Italiennes, to the work of the European modernist masters, classical mythology, fairy tales, child and outsider art, and the toys and dolls of her Russian folkloric heritage." Mora's critical reputation has remained steady after her death. In The Age, Peter Millard calls her ‘an artist, cultural figure and icon’, while James Antoniou of The Australian describes her as ‘an artist of the city and an artist of the people’, and ‘one of the most colourful’ of Australian artists. In a 2020 interview with Carolyn Webb of The Age, Mora's son William noted that his mother's paintings can express ‘each person’s humanity and diversity’, and noted the ways in which they resonate with the current Black Lives Matter movement.

Mora lived and worked in a number of studios in Melbourne, including Rankins Lane. She appeared in an early 1970 film by Paul Cox and his Prahran College students, and as an interviewee on the ABC's conversational television programs Agony Aunts and The Agony of Life in 2012 and 2013. In 2016 Mora, for a long time a contributor of design to the fashion industry, collaborated with Australian fashion company Gorman to launch a 23 piece collection based on four artworks. Her murals survive on the walls of the Tolarno restaurant and gallery she previously owned in St Kilda, and, a mosaic, at Flinders Street Station adjacent to Princes Bridge. In 2016, an East Melbourne bar-owner uncovered a lost mural on the wall of his establishment, previously the Café Balzac. Mora died, aged 90, at her home in Melbourne on 27 August 2018. Her life was celebrated in a State Memorial, attended by over 1200 people at the Palais de Danse, a landmark for her in St Kilda. She was the first female artist to receive a Victorian State Memorial.

Mora's first public showing was of three circus clown paintings on masonite at Tye's Gallery in their commemorative exhibition of the Contemporary Art Society by 86 of its members 6–23 April 1954 She went on to have more than 35 solo exhibitions throughout her career, most in five galleries; the Contemporary Art Society, Heidi Museum of Modern Art, Douglas Galleries, Tolarno Galleries, and Watters Gallery. An important retrospective Mirka Mora: where angels fear to tread: 50 years of art 1948–1998 was held at Heide Museum of Art 1999–2000 to celebrate 50 years of her work. Mirka Mora: Charcoals 1958–1965 featured in the Melbourne Art Fair 2018, from 2–5 August, just prior to her death. Other exhibitions include: • Mirka Mora paintings 1966–2012, 1–5 August 2012, Melbourne Art Fair, Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne • Mirka Goes West, July 2009, Short St Gallery, 7 Short Street, Chinatown, Broome, WA. • Women at Watters, (group show) 22 February 1995 – 11 March 1995, Watters Gallery, East Sydney, NSW • Mirka Mora, 1990, Arthouse, Launceston, Tasmania, An exhibition of 42 oil paintings, drawings and embroideries. • Exhibition of painted fabrics and dolls, 29 August – 12 September 1979, at the David Jones Art Gallery, 6th floor, Elizabeth Street, Sydney. • Annual Special Christmas Exhibition (group show), December 1986, Solander Gallery, 36 Grey Street, Deakin, ACT. • Embroideries of Mirka Mora, 1978, Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, Ballarat, VIC • Drawing exhibition (group show with John Perceval, Noel Counihan, Arthur Boyd), 24 February – 23 March 1977, Realities Gallery, Toorak, Melbourne, Vic. • Project 20: Fabric Art, September 1977 – 9 October 1977, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW • Mirka Mora, Erotic Drawings and Figures 2–18 May 1974, Realities Gallery, Melbourne, Vic • Mirka Mora: Paintings: 'The Finding of Erichthonius June 1968 – 22 June 1968, Watters Gallery, Sydney, NSW • Drawings by Mirka Mora. November 1968, Australian Sculpture Gallery, 1 Finniss Crescent, Narrabundah, NSW. • Paintings by the Aleph Group (group show by Australian Jewish artists), 4–11 October 1964, Studio Nundah, Canberra. • Foyer exhibition with Charles Blackman and Arthur Boyd, 26 March 1954 at the opening of "The Bachelor", Arrow Theatre • Contemporary Art Society exhibition, opened 6 April 1954. Tye's Gallery. This was the first CAS exhibition since 1947 (the revival due to efforts by the Moras and Reeds) and Mirka Mora's first Australian show

• Mirka Mora at the Australian National Film and Sound Archive * * * * * *

Mirka Mora was recorded at birth as Mirka Madeleine Zelik. The authorities additionally record the heading Mirka Madeleine Mora. Her recorded languages were French and English. She was the child of Leon Zelik and Suzanne Gelbein. She married Georges Mora. 2 children are recorded: Tiriel Mora and Philippe Mora.

Mirka Mora is recorded as painter, sculptor, mosaicist, restaurateur and artist. Recognition and collections. Mora received Officer of Arts and Letters.