Battle is on to save church masterpiece
Demolition threat to work of artist who fled Nazis
is a little book of just 48 pages. But it could help spread the gospel about a threatened masterpiece hidden in an empty church.
It shines a light on the work of Hungarian artist, George MayerMarton, who emigrated to England to save his work from the Nazis.
In a tragic twist of fate during a night raid by the Luftwaffe on September 11, 1940, an incendiary bomb struck George’s home destroying his studio and its contents.
Yet, from such deep despair, George not only survived, but rose again to produce what one critic described as ‘some of the most elegant incisive graphics in existence.’
They include a 1955 mosaic, described by Tristan Hunt, Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London as a work of ‘dazzling beauty.’
With its message of hope, renewal, and triumph over darkness, it dominates the interior of the abandoned Holy Rosary RC Church in Fitton Hill, Oldham, and the front cover of the book – George Mayer-Marton. Murals and Mosaics.
In a foreword to the volume the artist’s great nephew, Nick Braithwaite, says: “The spur for the book was an email from Steve Haines in late 2016. Steve had been an altar boy in the Catholic Church of Holy Rosary in Fitton Hill. He informed me that the building and George’s mosaic and fresco mural of The Crucifixion in it, his masterpiece, was under threat of demolition.”
He adds that to his ‘pain and disbelief’ he also learned from Steve of a decision in the 1980s to have the fresco part of the mural covered with magnolia emulsion paint, hiding original pictures of Mary and St John The Apostle.
In the 1940s George worked for the forerunner of the Arts Council. But in 1952 he was appointed a senior lecturer at Liverpool College of Art, where he pioneered the technique of Byzantine mosaics in England.
He did extensive work for the Catholic Church in the north west during the 1950s as new churches were being built. These included two remarkable mosaics in Manchester and Oldham. They are the only ecclesiastical murals by MayerMarton that survive in situ.
One, above the high altars inside St Clare’s RC Church on Victoria Avenue, Blackley, depicts St Clare of Assisi raising the Blessed Sacrament.
But there are fears The Crucifixion in Oldham could be lost as the church has now been closed since 2017. Nick says in the book: “Perhaps (Mayer-Marton) had an instinct that murals were less perishable than paintings, that these would embody his legacy. But paradoxically whereas an oil painting can be removed if a building is to be demolished, a mural will tend to share the fate of its host building.”
Henrietta Billings, director of SAVE Britain’s Heritage, said: “This little book is a fantastic reference for anyone interested in post-war British public art – it shines a light on the important contribution emigre artists made to Britain in the post-war period, and most critically it highIT lights the significance of the Oldham mural and our current campaign to save it.”
The book is published by Didsbury-based Baquis Press and features other works by Mayer-Marton, including The Pentecost mosaic in Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral which was moved there just in time before its original host church in Netherton was demolished.
Commenting on The Crucifixion mural Robert said: “I think it is fantastic. The murals in Blackley and the Metropolitan Cathedral in Liverpool are interesting.
“But the Oldham one is a different level because the figure of Christ is so powerful, poignant, and distressing, and the figures each side it made it so unusual.
“The church itself is sound, it is just as the congregation have left it. A school nearby is still thriving, and I can’t understand what the problem is. The Catholic Church has a lot of money, they could easily turn it into a community centre or something else with some imagination, even maybe with the help of a developer.
“Nick is tremendous at getting support. But you have to understand the emotional ties. They never met, yet his life has been lived in the shadow of his great uncle who was a remarkable man.”
The importance of the mural has also been highlighted by a number of national experts including the Twentieth Century Society, the Ceramic and Architectural Tiles Association as well as several leading academics and architectural historians. The 24ft 7inches long mural depicts the figure of Christ in golds and tans against a dark blue cross and gold mandorla. It was commissioned following the Festival of Britain when public art came to be seen as a symbol of civic renewal and social progress.
In the book Clare Willsdon, Professor of the History of Western Art, at the School of Culture and Creative Arts at the University of Glasgow, says of the mural: “As Mayer-Marton’s only mixed media mural known to survive in its original context, it is all the more vital that it should be scrupulously preserved in situ – and the overpainted part professionally returned to its original appearance and symbolism.”
The Diocese of Salford which owns the church has commissioned a conservation options appraisal to examine the best way of preserving the mural. This study is due to be published imminently.
Saving The Crucifixion in the Oldham church may be the greatest honour that can be paid to a man, who in his obituary in The Times, published in August 1960 after his death from leukaemia, was described as ‘a highly civilised man, and an artist of consistent accomplishment, whom our wretched century subjected to a generation of misfortunes, and who yet subdued them all.’
●