Edith Kiss

Edith Bán Kiss (also Edit, née Rott 1905 – 27 October 1966) was a Hungarian sculptor and painter. In the autumn of 1944, she was deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in northern Germany and then transferred to the Daimler-Benz factory at Ludwigsfelde where she was forced to work on aircraft engines for the Luftwaffe. Shortly after her release at the end of the war, she illustrated her experiences of concentration camps with 30 gouache sketches which were exhibited in Budapest in late 1945. There was however little recognition of her work in the West. As a result, following the death of her husband she committed suicide in Paris in 1966. In 1992, her Deportation series was exhibited in Berlin, Paris and Budapest.

Biography Born into a Jewish family in Budapest on 21 November 1905, Edith Kiss was the youngest of the four daughters of Friges and Melitta Rott. Having studied at the art academies in Budapest and Düsseldorf, she became a sculptor in Hungary in the period before World War II. Around that time, she married Tivadar Bán.

Despite further works reflecting her deportation experiences, there was little public recognition of Kiss's art. After periods spent in Switzerland, Casablanca and London, and the death of her husband, she committed suicide in a Paris hotel on the night of 26–27 October 1966. Her gouache album was rediscovered by Helmuth Bauer in London in 1992 and her gouaches have since been exhibited in various locations in Germany and in Paris and Budapest. They have also been presented in the We were Nobody exhibition at the .