Born in the Walloon Brabant, Martha Grünenwaldt spent her childhood playing the violin to accompany her father, a traveling musician, and hardly attended school. At twenty-three she married a musician and worked in a factory until the birth of her daughter. After four years of marriage, she left home with her child and started travelling, playing the violin at sidewalk cafes. But in 1940, her husband got the custody of their daughter. Martha Grünenwaldt was a domestic servant in a castle, where she was not allowed to play the violin. In 1968, her daughter asked her to move in with her. It is only when she turned seventy-one years that she started to draw. Often working on the back of posters and retrieved wallpaper, she exclusively represented female figures who transform themselves into flowers and animals.
GRÜNENWALDT martha
