13 Facts About Erica Brausen

Erica Brausen, was an art dealer and gallerist who established the Hanover Gallery in London in 1948.

Erica Brausen was an early champion of several influential contemporary artists, most notably Francis Bacon.

Erica Brausen left Germany in the early 1930s for Paris where she rented a room in Montparnasse.

In 1935 Erica Brausen moved to Majorca, where she ran a bar popular with artists, writers and visiting sailors.

Erica Brausen used these contacts to assist Jewish and socialist friends in escaping from Franco's forces during the Spanish Civil War.

Erica Brausen persuaded a US Navy submarine captain to take Michel Leiris and his family to safety in Marseille.

Erica Brausen herself escaped on a fishing boat and arrived, penniless, in England at the start of World War II.

In London, Erica Brausen began organising small art exhibitions, often in artist studios, but as a German national she encountered many difficulties and restrictions.

In 1948, with the financial support of Arthur Jeffress, a collector she had met at a party, Erica Brausen opened the Hanover Gallery in St George Street off Hanover Square in central London with a solo exhibition of works by Graham Sutherland.

Erica Brausen had bought a number of Francis Bacon early works, including Painting, and he held his first one-man show at the Hanover in November 1947.

Erica Brausen became Alberto Giacometti's principal dealer in London, selling more than seventy of his works over the lifetime of the Gallery.

Erica Brausen had been caught on two previous occasions and escaped both times but she was captured a third time in October 1944 in Venice and quickly deported to the camp.

Koopman helped Erica Brausen run the Hanover and the two women lived, openly, together until Koopman's death in 1991.