1899–1958
“She believed in creative energy . . . She has lived, and always with her art and her great energy tried to provoke everybody else to live, in the light of freedom, in the light of spirit; and if, therefore, we could have a way of remembering her, let us always remember her as a prophetess of spirit and of freedom. That is all that she would want from us.”
From the eulogy given by Eugene Halliday at Käthe Schuftan’s funeral.
Self-portrait by Käthe Schuftan
Käthe Schuftan arrived in Manchester in June 1939 after having suffered greatly at the hands of the Nazis and having had much of her work destroyed. She became an important figure in the artistic community of Manchester, teaching and inspiring young artists and exhibiting her work, but following a retrospective organised by Halliday after her death in 1958, her work disappeared and she was forgotten.
Collections of Schuftan’s paintings eventually began to appear in auctions from the 1990s, leading to the meeting of a select few people interested in her work, with a writer who had known her as a child, who gradually retraced Schuftan’s steps, leading to the rediscovery of the life of this remarkable woman. Her paintings were finally exhibited again in 2019 and 2025. Further exhibitions are planned for 2026 and 2027.
Talk for Insiders Outsiders Festival, June 2025
Exhibition, The Art of Eugene Halliday and Käthe Schuftan, Tan y Garth Hall Retreat, 2019-2020
Talk for the Eugene Halliday Association, 2019