Mirka Mora: From Holocaust survivor to the matriarch of Melbourne’s art scene, an incredible life on display in exhibition

Cherubs, angels, dewy wide-eyed faces; birds, snakes, and fantastical animal-human hybrids — all rendered in warm colours and bold lines. Love, light, joy. These are the hallmarks of Australian artist Mirka Mora.

But underneath that beauty lies Mora’s painful personal story, and a childhood that came to an abrupt end in 1942, when the French-born Jewish 14-year-old, her mother and her two sisters were sent to the Pithiviers internment camp, a temporary location before deportation to Nazi death camps.

In a 1979 interview with the ABC, Mora said: “I’m sure that my brain just got stuck at that age, because … what I saw was too terrible.”

Mora’s family managed to escape from the camp and, after the Holocaust, the artist would go on to…