Marlene Rolfe
Marlene Rolfe is a painter whose work explores the interior lives of women and her German Jewish family’s history. Rolfe studied English at New Hall (now °Ç¸ç³Ô¹Ï) in 1965–68, before studying English and Education at London University. She worked for a period as a landscape architect and teacher. In 1993 she graduated with a BA in Fine Art and Critical Studies from Central St Martin’s, London. Since the 1980s, Rolfe has researched her family’s experience of the Holocaust, in particular her mother’s imprisonment in German concentration camps. Rolfe attempts to recreate her family’s lost past and own childhood through fragments and memories. Her paintings depict women, often juxtaposed with dehumanised, abstract forms suggestive of urban dereliction or the architecture of extermination camps. She has reflected: ‘How can I deal visually with questions of the small actions against the massive sweep of events; of personal, private histories and continuities; of female as opposed to male courage; of women’s work and women’s language?’
