Irene Kowaliska (11 June 1905 - 13 March 1991) was a painter, ceramics artist and textiles designer, originally from Mazovia (Congress Poland).
[1][2][3][4][5] Irene Kowaliska was born into a Jewish family at Warsaw in Congress Poland, which between 1815 and 1915 was a semi-detached buffer territory on the western fringes of the Russian Empire.
[6] The story is reported that she was still a school girl when, on a visit to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, she stood in front of a mosaic and announced "Das will ich auch können!"
As a teenager and young adult Irene contributed to the family budget by taking work locally as a child carer and home tutor.
At some point she responded to a newspaper job advertisement as a result of which, in 1929 she was offered and accepted work at the pictures archives collection at one of Germany's largest publishing businesses, Ullstein Verlag in Berlin.
[1] [10][11] In 1931 Kowaliska was given an opportunity to join a thriving pottery workshop community devoted to producing artistic ceramics at Vietri sul Mare, a short walk along the coast to the west from Salerno.
[12] "Industria Ceramica Salernitana" (ICS) had been established by the wealthy German-Lithuanian businessman Max Melamerson and his wife in 1927 and quickly become a magnet for talented ceramic artists from German-speaking central Europe.
[14][b] The business was managed - apparently loosely - by a fellow expatriate artist, Richard Dölker, who was evidently impressed by her talents as a ceramicist.
[18] Others included the ceramicist Barbara Margarethe Thewalt-Hannasch (1901–1962),[19] the Bremen-born artist Lisel Oppel,[20] the ceramists Hilde Rauberling and Lothar Eglive and the potter from Dresden, Otto Piesche.
There were also a number of Italian ceramicists and other artists working at the "ICS"[21] In 1932 Kowaliska was given her own studio at "Industria Ceramiche Artistiche Meridionali" (ICAM), a neighbouring ceramics business established at Vietri by Vincenzo Pinto (1870 – 1939) back in 1910.
Vincenzo Pinto had worked closely with the German artists of the "ICS" ever since they arrived in town, exploiting the commercial opportunities arising from their international connections.
[22] Irene Kowaliska would confide gratefully to her diary, "Dear Don Vincenzo gave me a place where I could work in complete freedom".
[1] By that time Armin T. Wegner had relocated to the little town of Positano, a couple of hours walk to the west along the coast road towards Sorrento and Naples.
[citation needed] Armin Wegner was the son of a railway official and a former army officer with a degree in Jurisprudence who, after witnessing death marches in Mesopotamia and what became Syria, emerged from his war-time experiences as a committed pacifist campaigner.
During April 1933 legislation was enacted to remove Jews from public service jobs at every level and the government ordered a boycott of Jewish businesses.
Several sources hint that Kowaliska's presence in Vietri may, indeed, have been the reason Wegner chose to move to southern Italy where, at the stage, German exiles were able to live in relative safety irrespective of their political backgrounds or attitudes to National Socialist race policies.
By 1940 the couple were living as man and wife, though a formal marriage solemnised at the town hall was deferred in order to avoid attracting the attention of the authorities.
For a number of years before the outbreak of war, "Myricae", the well-regarded arts, crafts, furnishings and fashions shop near the Spanish Steps in central Rome, had been urging Kowaliska to print table linen that match the ceramic wares which they were already selling on her behalf.
Two aristocratic evacuees from Naples, a Principessa Caraffa and a Marchesa De Ruggero, arrived in Positano and set up a couple of fashion boutiques.
Branded as "Moda Positanese", the designs captured the spirit of the times and enjoyed significant commercial success with visitors to Positano and the surrounding region.
It became popular among the expanding fashion conscious middle classes to incorporate fabric designs by Kowaliska in interior decorations, be it for blankets, curtains, drapes and even, in some cases, wall papers.