Papers of Anton Ehrenzweig

Anton Ehrenzweig (1908-1966) was born in Vienna into a family of lawyers and legal academics of assimilated Jewish background. Seemingly destined to follow in the footsteps of his father and brother, he took a doctorate in law at the University of Vienna in 1932, but was forced to emigrate with his family following the Anschluss in 1938.

Ehrenzweig settled in England, where he met his future wife Gerda Hiller, but in 1940 he was arrested as an 'enemy alien' and deported to an internment camp in Australia. Returning to the UK upon release in 1942, he found work as 'a colourist in industry' and then from 1949 as an instructor in textile printing at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London, where he assisted his younger colleague Eduardo Paolozzi with screen printing.

In parallel with this work, Ehrenzweig studied anthropology as a mature student and began publishing articles which applied psychoanalytic theory to aesthetics, culminating in the book 'The Psychoanalysis of Artistic Vision and Hearing' (1953). He also lectured at the ICA and gave several talks for BBC radio. In 1958 he undertook a lecture tour of the US, supported by a fellowship from the Bollingen Foundation.

From 1963 he was a visiting teacher at Ravensbourne College of Art and Design, Bromley, and from 1964 he taught on the Art Teacher's Certificate course at Goldsmiths' College, University of London, where he could put his theories about art education into practice. He supported the work of younger artists, notably including Bridget Riley, about whom he wrote one of the first critical articles. At the time of his death in 1966 he had just completed the book 'The Hidden Order of Art', which was published posthumously in 1967.

A selection of material from the Ehrenzweig archive (donated to Tate in 2010) has been digitised as part of the Émigré Arts Project, generously funded by the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust.

Collection Owner

Anton Ehrenzweig 1908 – 1966

Collection

Tate Archive

Acquisition

Presented to Tate Archive by Tony Ehrenzweig, June 2010.

Reference

TGA 201010