Hilda Goldwag

Hilda Goldwag (28 April 1912 – 28 January 2008) was an artist whose works included paintings, book illustrations and commercial designs.[1] She was born in Austria but moved to Scotland in 1939 to escape the Nazis and many of her paintings are of life and buildings in Glasgow.[2]

One of three children, Goldwag was raised primarily by her mother after her artist father, Moses Leopold Goldwag, died when she was nine years old.[3] She attended Anna Schantruch Art Classes in Vienna and was one of a number of pupils chosen to paint murals for the Sandleitener Kindergarten.[3] Despite the Nazi Anschluss of Austria in March 1938, she graduated from the Staatliche Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt in Vienna later in 1938.[3] Goldwag moved to Scotland, as a refugee, in March 1939 to escape persecution by the Nazis.[2] Her family was due to follow her six months later, but World War II was declared the day they received their travel permits, causing them to be trapped in Austria. They were taken to a concentration camp and perished during The Holocaust.[4] Her sadness at the loss of six family members can be felt in much of Goldwag’s art.[4][5]

Goldwag met her lifelong friend, and fellow refugee, Cecile Schwarzschild (1915–1998) in Edinburgh in 1939 at the Quaker Meeting House.[6] They relocated to Glasgow when war broke out to take up war work at McGlashlan’s Engineering Works.[1] From 1945 to 1955, Goldwag was the head designer at the textile company Friedlanders, work which included designing scarves for Marks & Spencer.[1] She also undertook freelance illustration work for the publishers Collins.[1] She illustrated the 1955 edition of Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verse.[4] From 1962 to 1975 Goldwag worked part-time as a hospital occupational therapist while continuing to paint.[1] Although Goldwag painted several portraits of Schwarzschild from the early 1950s onwards, she did not became a full-time painter until retirement.[7] Godwag painted landscapes and industrial buildings, often working outdoors with oil on canvas and also painted flowers and portraits.[1] During the 1980s, Goldwag had a number of exhibitions and was an active member of several artist societies, notably the Glasgow Society of Women Artists and the Scottish Society of Women Artists.[1] Examples of her paintings are held by the Ben Uri Gallery in London, by Strathclyde University and by the Scottish Jewish Archives Centre.[1][8]