page_title: Mary Kessell
section_title: War artist
hierarchical_section_title: Mary Kessell / War artist
caption_attribution_description: English: Figures walking &amp; cycling along a street amid the debris of bombed buildings
context_page_description: Mary M Kessell was a British figurative painter, illustrator, designer and war artist. Born in London, she studied at the Clapham School of Art, then later at the Central School of Arts and Crafts. At the end of the Second World War, she was commissioned to work in Germany as an official British war artist; one of only three women selected. She spent six weeks in Germany, travelling to the recently liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp as well as other major cities including Berlin. She produced charcoal drawings of refugees, primarily of women and children which she subsequently sold to the War Artists Advisory Committee. After the war Kessell collaborated with the Needlework Development Scheme, NDS, to produce experimental designs for machine and hand embroidery as well as working for Shell as a designer. She later returned to the Central School to teach at the School of Silversmithing and Jewellery alongside the painter Richard Hamilton.
context_section_description: During the end of the Second World War, Kessell was based in Germany having been commissioned by the War Artists Advisory Committee, WAAC, as an official British war artist. Just three female war artists worked abroad during World War II; as one of them, Kessell was asked to document refugees "moving through Europe in the aftermath of the German surrender". She spent six weeks in Germany, from 9 August 1945 to 20 September, where she made charcoal drawings of refugees as well as keeping a diary of her experiences.
  Kessell's first destination was the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, which had been liberated by Allied forces four months previously. She arrived later than the other war artists, including Doris Zinkeisen, Edgar Ainsworth and Eric Taylor, who had visited the camp immediately after its liberation. By the time Kessell arrived, the remaining camp buildings had been destroyed and former inmates were being transferred to the nearby displaced persons camp. Convoys for the camp survivors to return to their home countries were being organized and Kessell witnessed a number of these departures. This had a distinct effect on the work she produced. At Belsen, Kessell completed seven drawings in black and sanguine charcoal, which she called Notes from Belsen Camp, 1945. These were the smallest of the drawings produced during her time as a war artist. Unlike the work produced by the other artists, which often featured detailed scenes and backgrounds, Kessell's subjects are entirely removed from any sense of background. The subject themselves, primarily women and children, are drawn as "detail-less bodies".
  During her time in Germany, Kessell also visited Hamburg, Lübeck, Hanover, Kiel, Berlin and Potsdam also producing charcoal drawings in a similar style to those that she completed at Belsen. A diary of her time in Germany was published in the Cornhill Magazine in 1946.
caption: Ruins in Hamburg: The Dock Area (1945) (Art.IWM ART LD 5745a)
exif: {"Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image Copyright": "Imperial War Museums"}