Mirka - 9 Collins Street

Mirka Mora (1928–2018), French-born artist and restaurateur, was loved as much for her contributions to contemporary art as for her generous and outrageous nature. Having narrowly escaped Auschwitz as a girl, Mora trained in drama in Paris. By 1951, when she came to Melbourne with her husband, Georges, she was committed to painting. Soon the couple became friends with the city's leading artists and collectors, and were instrumental in the re-formation of the Contemporary Art Society. Over the 1950s and 1960s they opened the European-style Mirka Café in Exhibition Street, Balzac in East Melbourne and the Tolarno in St Kilda. While Georges established himself as an art dealer, opening Tolarno Galleries in 1967, Mirka became a bohemian icon of the city. She worked prolifically for six decades across a range of media and is represented in many state and regional collections.

In the mid-1960s Lazar Krum took several portraits of Mora and her family at her studio/home on Collins Street. In this image, Mora poses before a mural of her characteristic softly rounded, angelic figures, her eyes opened wide in playful mimicry of their unblinking gaze. Photographer Krum suggests the image 'has captured Mirka, in the midst of her iconic faces, caught between both the delightful and ominous nature of her life experience'.

Gift of the artist 2015