Margot Evans

Margot Evans was born in 1914 to a prominent Jewish family in the Konstanz, Germany. Unable to attend university in Germany because of the anti-Semitic laws, she travelled to the United States in 1936 and went on to teach at the Michigan State University. Two years after her family died in Auschwitz, Margot married fellow faculty member Joseph Evans, who was a renowned concert pianist. Committing fully to her career as an artist in the 1950s, Margot worked with artists Bessie Boris and Jacques Weissman. Her first solo exhibition was at the Galerie Duncan in Paris, where her abstracted jewel-toned landscapes were described as "decorative realism, a veritable fairy universe". Of her exhibit in the Kleine Gallery in Vienna, a contemporary critic wrote, "Her paintings are like fairy tails, cosmic visions full of imagination and color which transport us into a magic world where jewels begin to glow. Her motto seems to be: Life is serious but art is happy." Of her own work Margot stated, "There is so much that is good and wonderful in life, I hope that comes across in my paintings. When I paint I divorce myself from all subject matter, to delight in the forms and shapes of nature - In the joy and optimism it imparts."