17 Facts About Mitzi Cunliffe

Mitzi Cunliffe was most famous for designing the golden trophy in the shape of a theatrical mask that would go on to represent the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and be presented as the BAFTA Award.

Mitzi Cunliffe attended the Art Students League of New York from 1930 to 1933 and read Fine Arts and Fine Arts Education at Columbia University from 1935 to 1940, receiving a BSc in 1939 and an MA in 1940.

Mitzi Cunliffe was awarded the 1949 Widener Gold Medal by the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts for A Voluptuous Object.

Mitzi Cunliffe is one of the sculptors identified in the 70 Sculptors photograph taken at that event.

Mitzi Cunliffe was a lecturer at Manchester University, and she moved with him to Didsbury.

Mitzi Cunliffe created a similar piece, in the form of knots, in 1952 which remains at the School of Civic Design at Liverpool University.

Heaton Park pumping station was built in 1955, for which Mitzi Cunliffe was commissioned to design and craft a relief panel which depicts the water being brought from Haweswater to Manchester.

Mitzi Cunliffe created a large pierced screen for the restaurant at Lewis's department store in Liverpool in 1957.

Mitzi Cunliffe bought the piece when the Restaurant closed in 1986, and moved it to her home at Seillans in the south of France.

Mitzi Cunliffe designed textiles for David Whitehead and Tootal Broadhurst, and ceramics for Pilkington.

Mitzi Cunliffe developed a technique for mass-producing abstract designs in relief in concrete, as architectural decoration, which she described as "sculpture by the yard".

Mitzi Cunliffe used the technique to decorate buildings throughout the UK, but particularly in and around Manchester.

Mitzi Cunliffe suffered from arthritis and eye problems in later life.

Mitzi Cunliffe gave up sculpture to teach at Thames Polytechnic from 1971 to 1976, and then at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York, the University of Pennsylvania, and Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Mitzi Cunliffe later developed Alzheimer's disease, and retired to Oxford, but she remained in the public eye.

Mitzi Cunliffe's designs were included in an exhibition of Public Sculpture held in Leeds at the Henry Moore Institute in the autumn of 1999.

Mitzi Cunliffe died at her nursing home in Oxfordshire, two days before her 89th birthday.