I was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1943. My father was a political refugee who had escaped Nazi Germany.  In Egypt he met and married my Italian mother and we lived there until 1949 before moving to Post-war London where I attended art college.

 

On finishing art school, I was offered a year-long residency in Italy funded by the British Council and Italian Government. I continued  to paint, teach and work in Rome for almost three years. Back then, I was very interested in semi-figurative painting and my work was influenced by artists like Francis Bacon. 

 

On returning to London, I took a studio and met my husband, a Portuguese political refugee. After the Carnation Revolution in 1974, we decided to go back to Portugal in 1980. We lived in Lisbon where I participated in many exhibitions and solo shows with my large abstract landscape paintings. 

 

In 2000 I stopped painting because I was more interested in reaching a wider audience to call attention to the social and political issues of our time, issues which are important to me. This is why I  have chosen to use in the main, everyday, cheap and accessible, plastic objects to create my collages and sculptures,  responding in my own way, to the injustices which affect us all. 

 

About six years ago my husband passed away, I decided to move back to London to be near my children where I continue to work on social and political issues through my art.