Malva Schalek Art for Sale and Sold Prices

Painter, b. 1882 - d. 1944

Malva Schalek, aka Malvina Schalková (18 February 1882 – 24 May 1944[1] or 24 March 1945[2]), was a Czech-Jewish painter.

Malva Schalek was born in Prague to a German-speaking Jewish intellectual family active in the Czech national movement.[3] She went to school in Prague, Vrchlabi (Hohenelbe), and studied art, first at the Frauenakademie in Munich and then privately in Vienna. She earned her living as a painter in Vienna, in her studio above the Theater an der Wien, until July 1938, when she was forced to flee from the Nazis, leaving her paintings behind. Only some 30 works from this period have been recovered; two were found in the Historisches Zentrum von Wien.[4]

Schalek was deported to the Terezin (Theresienstadt) ghetto in February 1942, where she produced more than 100 drawings and watercolors portraying fellow inmates and their life there. Because of her refusal to portray a collaborationist doctor, she was deported to Auschwitz on 18 May 1944, where she perished.