Carry van Biema was born in Hannover, Germany, into a prosperous, intellectual Jewish family.
Her family had Dutch origins, and for most of her life she lived, worked and exhibited peripatetically in both countries.

Carry van Biema aged 15 (picture: www.joodsmonument.nl)

Van Biema decided at a young age to become an artist and art teacher.

She taught art and art history, mingled with German avant-garde groups, while also displaying a sincere duty to old masters and classic texts, such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s writings on colour. 

In 1930 she published Farben und Formen als lebendige Kräfte (literally: Colours and forms as living forces), an intensely personal and intellectual work on colour in art that aims to combine scholarship with practical advice. The book is now little known and extremely rare.

Van Biema's life story is also the story of Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, and a life cut short by immeasurably cruelty. 

An inscribed copy of Carry van Biema's only published book.