Died in London

Marie-Louise von Motesiczky died in London on 11 June 1996, at the age of 89, having spent nearly six decades in exile from her native Austria. She had fled Vienna in 1938 following the Anschluss, eventually settling permanently in England, where she continued to paint prolifically until shortly before her death.

Her death marked the end of a career that spanned some of the most turbulent decades of European history, encompassing the trauma of forced emigration, the loss of family members and homeland, and decades of relative critical neglect before a resurgence of interest in her work later in life. In her final years, exhibitions in Vienna, London, and elsewhere had begun to restore her reputation as one of the most significant émigré painters of the twentieth century.

Motesiczky bequeathed her estate and a substantial body of her paintings to a charitable trust, The Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust, which continues to promote scholarship, exhibitions, and awareness of her work and legacy. Her death was mourned as the loss of one of the last surviving links to the Viennese artistic and psychoanalytic milieu of the early twentieth century, and her posthumous reputation has grown considerably, with major retrospectives held in London, Vienna, and Frankfurt in the years following her passing.