Personal and professional papers, artwork, correspondence and photographs of Milein Cosman

1890s–2010s

Milein Cosman (1921–2017) was a German artist who spent her adult life in Britain. Born Emilie Else Cosmann into a Jewish family in Düsseldorf, she was sent to Switzerland in 1937 for her education as antisemitism intensified. After her family home was attacked during Kristallnacht in 1938 and her parents fled to Amsterdam, she moved to London in 1939 to study at the Slade School of Fine Art, arriving six weeks before the outbreak of the Second World War. The Slade relocated to Oxford during the war, and there she studied painting, drawing and lithography, winning first prize in 1940 for her lithograph Flight. During this period she formed lasting friendships with writers and artists, including Iris Murdoch and Marie-Louise von Motesiczky. In 1945 she settled in Hampstead, where she lived for the rest of her life. A 1947 commission to draw the first Edinburgh Festival led to her meeting the musician and musicologist Hans Keller; they married and remained together until his death in 1985.

Cosman became part of a vibrant émigré cultural community, and was widely commissioned to produce drawings for publications and broadcasters including The Radio Times, Financial Times, The Times, LIFE and others. She also created books, designed covers and exhibited extensively. Known best for her drawings of musicians, artists and performers, Milein Cosman would draw people, often unseen, from the wings of a rehearsal, during performances, on city streets and during commissions. This material has been selected to offer a broad picture of Cosman's prolific artistic output, as well as an insight into her wide social circle, including close friendships with Kyffin Williams, Ernst Gombrich, Marie-Louise von Motesiczky, and John Heartfield.

This archive was catalogued and digitised thanks to a generous grant from The Cosman Keller Art and Music Trust. Translations courtesy of Jonathan Blower.

Collection Owner: Milein Cosman 1921 – 2017
Collection: Tate Archive
Acquisition: Presented by the Cosman Keller Art and Music Trust, 2021
Reference: TGA 20227