Käthe Strenitz (1923–2017). 

Large Crayon & Watercolour. 

Large Watercolour. Still Life Interior Scene. 

Signed & Dated 1981

Sheet Size Approx 76 x 56 cm

One mark to top left corner (appears to be a tape mark) 6 x 2 cm

Born in Czechoslovakia, Käthe Strenitz arrived in England in 1939 at the age of 16 in a kindertransport arranged by Nicholas Winton, the British humanitarian. Traumatised by the loss of her entire family in the holocaust, and following difficult experiences as a refugee including insufficient food, she arrived in London to find that Mrs Winton had sent some of her drawings to Austrian artist Oskar Kokoschka, the Austrian Expressionist painter, upon whose recommendation she was awarded a British Council scholarship at Regent Street Polytechnic. Dissatisfied with the teaching however, she left and did full-time war work, moving into the Czech Trust Fund-maintained Canterbury Hall hostel, where she met refugee poet Erich Fried and her future husband, a Czech-Jewish journalist-turned-entrepreneur.  Her fascination with industrial landscapes and London scenes presented in dark and forceful tones extended from painting the famous gasholders of King’s Cross to drawings of pit heads in Wales. Over the course of her career, she showed at several galleries, notably the Boundary, Bankside and Ben Uri galleries. Her work is in the collection of the London Metropolitan Archives, the National Museum of Wales, and the Museum of London. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, and her work is in a number of museum collections.