Mirka Mora was a much-loved French-Australian artist and teacher who, together with her husband Georges Mora, made a profound contribution to Melbourne’s cultural, artistic and culinary life from the 1950s onwards. Known for her flamboyant and eccentric personality and sense of style, Mirka’s 60-year long career spanned painting, drawing, embroidery, soft sculpture and doll-making, puppetry, theatre sets and costumes, and large-scale murals and mosaics. Mirka had no formal artistic training but compensated for this by extensive personal research and reading in art history and other disciplines. Her imagery – of wide-eyed children, animals, mythical creatures and angels – is iconic and easily recognisable.
Mirka was born Madeleine Mirka Zelik in Paris on 18 March 1928, the oldest of three girls, to a Lithuanian father and Romanian mother, both of whom were Jewish. Mirka’s father, Leon, was an antiques dealer and she was exposed to an artistic environment from an early age.
On 16 July 1942, at the age of 14, Mirka, her mother and her two sisters were arrested by the police as part of a roundup of Jewish families and spent three days and nights in the Vélodrome d’Hiver. They were then transferred by train to Pithiviers, a transit camp 90 kilometres from Paris, from where convoys went straight to Auschwitz. During the train journey to Pithiviers, Mirka’s mother Suzanne wrote down the names of the stations they passed and pushed an envelope containing the list through gaps between slats of wood in the side of the train. The envelope reached Leon, who worked out that they were heading for Pithiviers. Through contacts in the French Jewish Resistance he managed to have them released after three weeks. The family lived in hiding in the French countryside until the end of the war.
In 1945, following the liberation, the family returned to Paris. Mirka briefly returned to school but left at the age of 17, impatient to get on with her life. She found work in an orphanage for Jewish children run by Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants; the head of OSE was Georges Mora, whom Mirka was to marry in 1947. Mirka also spent some time at the Ecole d’Education Par le Jeu and l’Art Dramatique, a theatre school in Paris. Georges and Mirka’s first son, Philippe, was born in 1949.
Fear of the Cold War prompted the Moras’ decision to emigrate. Casablanca and Saigon were among the possible destinations, but Mirka convinced Georges to go to Melbourne, a place she had read about in a book during her childhood. The Moras arrived in Melbourne in July 1951 and initially lived in a house in suburban Mckinnon, where Mirka started dressmaking. But suburban life was not particularly appealing to the Moras, and by the middle of 1952 they had moved to a studio at 9 Collins Street in the city. Their second son, William, was born in 1953 and their third, Tiriel, in 1959.
Soon after settling in Collins Street, the Moras met art patrons John and Sunday Reed, with whom they were to develop a very close relationship. Georges worked with Sunday and John to revive the Contemporary Art Society which later became the Museum of Modern Art at Heide. Through their relationship with the Reeds and the Moras’ own interests in art and culture they met many artists, writers, musicians and other creative people, and the Collins Street studio became known as a hub for exhibitions as well as wild parties. It was during this time that Mirka began to work on her own art, encouraged by some of the artists she knew.
In addition to the central role they played in the creation of a dynamic artistic culture in Melbourne, Georges and Mirka opened and successfully ran three restaurants – Mirka Café in 1954, followed by Balzac in 1958 and the Tolarno Restaurant and Galleries in St Kilda in 1965 – which introduced French food to Melbourne and became meeting points for the local art world and visiting creatives from overseas. Mirka and Georges separated in 1970, with Mirka starting life alone in a house on Wellington Street, St Kilda. Tolarno was sold and Georges could focus on running a gallery without a restaurant. He died at the age of 79.
Mirka was an iconic figure in St Kilda for over three decades. In 1981, she bought 116 Barkly Street, St Kilda where she lived until she moved to her final home and studio in Richmond in 1999. In 2001, Mirka Lane was named after her to commemorate Mirka’s connection to St Kilda; it is located off Barkly Street, near where she lived.
Mirka’s artistic practice was vast and incredibly varied. She produced charcoal drawings, oil and tempera paintings, painted soft sculptures/dolls and embroideries, as well as designing and producing the sets and costumes for ballet and theatre productions. She designed stamps for Australia Post and collaborated with fashion designer Gorman on clothing ranges. Following several exhibitions of her dolls, she started running workshops for both adults and children, including at the Centre for Adult Education, where for over 23 years she taught doll-making, embroidery, watercolour and painting. Gradually, Mirka began to receive commissions for major public artworks. She was the first of a series of fourteen artists commissioned to paint trams by the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of the Arts of Victoria in 1978. She also produced a number of murals, including the mosaic mural at Flinders Street Station in Melbourne and another mosaic at the entrance to St Kilda Pier.
During her over 60-year career Mirka held more than 35 solo exhibitions. Her work is included in many private collections as well as in public collections such as the National Gallery of Victoria, the National Gallery of Australia and Heide Museum of Modern Art. In 1998 the City of Melbourne awarded Mirka the title ‘Honoured Artist’ in recognition of ‘her lifelong achievement in the arts which has made an outstanding contribution to the life of this city.’ She received the Sir Zelman Cowen medal for her outstanding contribution to adult education. In 2002 she was made an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government. She was also the author of two books – Wicked But Virtuous: My Life and Love and Clutter.
Mirka Mora died on 27 August 2018 at the age of 90. Her life and contribution to Australia were celebrated at a packed State Memorial Service held at the Palais Theatre in St Kilda, the first female artist to receive a state funeral. In 2021 the Jewish Museum of Australia mounted MIRKA – a major retrospective exhibition of Mirka’s work and life; many visitors to this exhibition took the opportunity to reminisce with great warmth about their own personal interactions with Mirka, either as students in one of her workshops, as owners of her art, or having met her in one of the Moras’ restaurants or while she was pushing her doll pram down the street in Richmond!
Image: From the collection of Sabine Cotte with permission Feb 2025.
Author: Robyn Stern, Melbourne, May 2024.
References:
City of Port Phillip and Jewish Museum of Australia. Walks in Port Phillip: Mirka’s St Kilda.
Cotte, Sabine 2017. ‘Diaries, petticoats and copious research: a rare glimpse into Mirka Mora’s artistic process.’ The Conversation.
Cotte, Sabine 2019. Mirka Mora: A Life Making Art. Thames and Hudson.
Cotte, Sabine 2020. ‘Mosaic, gold, and frilly skirts: Mirka Mora’s legacy in Melbourne.’ Melbourne Historical Journal 47 95-117.
Cuthbertson, Debbie 2018. ‘Much-loved Melbourne artist Mirka Mora dies aged 90.’ The Age.
Denton, Jenny 2022. ‘Mirka Mora tribute curated in Melbourne.’ The Senior.
Mora, Mirka 2002. Wicked But Virtuous: My Life. Penguin Books.
Watts, Richard 2018. ‘Artist Mirka Mora Dies Aged 90.’ Artshub.
Keywords:
Mirka Mora, Holocaust survivor, artist, teacher, painted tram, French restaurants Melbourne.