Charlotte Mayer with two of her sculptures, c.1990 © Steve Russell

This talk forms part of the events programme – organised in partnership with Insiders/Outsiders – accompanying our exhibition, Fred Kormis: Sculpting the Twentieth Century, which runs until 6 February 2025.

This talk, given by the sculptor’s daughter, Antonia Salmon who is also an artist, will explore Charlotte Mayer’s early years growing up in Prague and the impact on her life of her experience of being a child refugee when she came to the UK in 1939 at the age of ten. Antonia will also discuss the influence on her mother’s approach to life of her creative and dynamic grandmother.

Charlotte’s deep interest in and practice of meditation, combined with her studies of nature, led her to produce abstract forms that have dynamism and stillness in their apparent simplicity. Many of her sculptures were a healing response to life challenges. She will explore Charlotte’s working methods and materials and how these translated into the production of bronze and stainless works for private and public commissions.

Antonia Salmon is an internationally renowned ceramic artist. Brought up in a household dedicated to modern sculpture and architecture, her childhood was infused with an awareness of form and space. She studied Geography and Geology at Sheffield University, and later attended Harrow School of Art as a studio potter.

A year spent studying in the Middle East and India made a deep impression and after returning to England in 1985 she established her first workshop in London. In the late 1980s, she returned to Sheffield where she still lives and works.