Margarete Marks

Margarete Marks (1899 – 1990), born in Cologne, was a painter, ceramicist, printmaker and teacher, and one of the first female students to be admitted to the Bauhaus school of art and design.

Born into a Jewish family Marks (née Heymann, also known as Grete Marks) studied painting at the College of Applied Arts, Cologne and the Academy of Fine Arts, Düsseldorf, before joining Johannes Itten’s preliminary course at the Bauhaus in Weimar in 1920 and then studying ceramics under Gerhard Marcks.

In 1923, with her husband Gustav Loebenstein, Marks established a highly successful pottery factory near Berlin. From there her progressive designs were exported to prestigious clients including Heal's and Liberty in England. When in 1934 the pottery was forcibly sold to a member of the Nazi party, Marks travelled to Palestine, visiting potteries in Jerusalem, before immigrating to Britain in 1936. Settling in Stoke-on-Trent Marks taught at Burslem School of Art and worked for Minton Pottery, where she continued to produce her own radical, avant-garde designs. In July 1938 Marks was included in the Exhibition of Twentieth Century German Art, held at the New Burlington Galleries, London. She also founded her own studio, Greta Pottery (with studio mark 'GP') which closed in 1940. With the closure of Greta Pottery, Marks concentrated on painting in watercolour and oils, and on drawing and lithography.

In 2019 Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, UK, held an exhibition of Margarete Marks’ watercolour portraits. Her work can be found in private and public collections internationally including the National Portrait Gallery, London; Bauhaus Archiv, Berlin; the National Museum of Wales and The British Museum.