Malva Schalek: Portraitist of the Holocaust and Theresienstadt Chronicler

Malva Schalek, born in Prague in 1882 to a bourgeois Jewish family, pursued art in Berlin and Vienna, where she established a studio and gained recognition for portraits of Jewish bourgeoisie women and children. Her work was shown in the Viennese Secession and solo exhibitions. After the Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938, she left Vienna and was imprisoned in Theresienstadt (Terezín) from 1942 to 1944. There, art became a therapeutic outlet; she sketched fellow inmates and camp life, capturing claustrophobia and alienation. A German doctor collaborating with the Nazis requested a portrait; she deferred, citing lack of time, and was deported to Auschwitz in 1944, where she died within weeks. Her final work, a self-portrait from 1944, shows her aged and cadaverous. Her works are held in the Ghetto Fighters House Museum, Yad Vashem Art Museum, and private collections.