Toni Mau

Toni Mau (2 September 1917 – 22 November 1981) was a German painter, graphic artist and arts academy teacher.

Life Between 1934 and 1939, and again between 1941 and 1943, Toni Mau studied at the Teaching Institute of the Berlin Museum of Applied Arts (Unterrichtsanstalt des Kunstgewerbemuseum) in Berlin-Charlottenburg. Her teachers included Hans Orlowski and Max Kaus. In May 1945 the end of the war put an end to Nazi dictatorship, while a large region surrounding Berlin found itself designated and administered as the Soviet occupation zone. For a period in 1945 and 1946 Mau worked for the Red army, which she was able to combine with work as an art teacher in Werneuchen, a small town a short distance outside Berlin where a large Soviet military presence was being set up around the military airfield. In 1953 she was appointed to a teaching post at the prestigious Academy for Visual arts in Berlin-Weissensee. However, she soon became involved in the Formalism Struggle and became the target of powerful criticism: in 1957 found herself having to abandon her teaching career despite the excellence of her teaching, to which former students have attested.

Toni Mau died in Berlin on 22 November 1981. Her works can be seen at the Academy of Arts, the Märkisches Museum and the Kupferstichkabinett (museum of prints and drawing) in Berlin, the Kupferstich-Kabinett in Dresden, the Rostock Art Gallery and the State Museum in Schwerin as well as at public collections in Finland and Cuba. Others of her works are held in private collections.