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Monica Petzal (born 22 June 1953) is a British artist, known primarily as a painter and printmaker.

Early life
Petzal was born in London German Jewish refugee parents. She studied painting at the Kingston School of Art, then took an MA in Art History at the University of Sussex, studying under Norbert Lynton. She entered the Royal College of Art Painting School in 1978 and graduated in 1981.

Career
After graduation, she worked as an art critic and editor for Art Monthly and Time Out and as a university lecturer.

From 1981 to 1987, Petzal taught painting, drawing and art history at the Byam Shaw School of Art, the London College of Printing, and the Epsom College of Art. She was visiting lecturer at St Martin’s College, Middlesex University, the Royal College of Art and for the Whitechapel and Saatchi Galleries.

From 1992-2006, she was a director of The Foundation for Women’s Art (FWA), a non-profit organisation that she co-founded. Its mission was to increase public knowledge and understanding of the work of women artists, both historic and contemporary. FWA had an extensive programme of exhibitions and events, educational and community activities, research and publications over a period of 14 years. In 1994, she and Belinda Harding developed a plan to establish a Museum of Women's Art (MWA) in London. The plan was not implemented, though an inaugural exhibition, Reclaiming the Madonna, was held at the Economist Building that year.

In 1999, she began an MA in printmaking at the Camberwell School of Art, graduating in 2001. At this time, she began showing her own work more widely and it began to be collected by museums and individuals.

From 2000 to 2007, she was an interviewer for the British Library and Tate Gallery Archive’s Artists’ Lives oral history project and was considered a catalyst for the 'Art Professionals' portion, recording life story interviews with curators, critics, dealers and gallery owners. Her interviewees included Annely Juda, Norbert Lynton, John Kasmin and Leslie Waddington.

In 2006, Petzal established Printroom, a gallery specializing in contemporary printmaking. Based from 2006-2013 in Hampstead, London, Printroom now operates online and from a large studio and gallery space in Sweffling, Suffolk.

Since 2014 Petzal has been a trustee of the Dresden Trust, a British charity dedicated to healing the wounds of war and furthering harmonious relations between the people of Britain and the German city of Dresden. She is currently the Vice Chair. Her maternal family left Dresden in 1936.

She has been a trustee of the Printmakers Council and remains an advisor. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and continues to write for magazines including for Printmaking Today.

Selected solo exhibitions
Petzal’s recent work concerns her family’s displacement from Germany under the Nazi regime and the broader themes of dissent, displacement and destruction in the twentieth century and beyond. Her one-person exhibitions include:


 * 2015 The Dresden Project - Indelible Marks, Kreuzkirche, Dresden and Herbert Art Gallery and Museum
 * 2015 75/70 The Coventry Dresden Towers, Coventry Cathedral
 * 2020 Dissent and Displacement: A Modern Story, Leicester Museum & Art Gallery

Selected group exhibitions

 * 2010 Originals 10, at the Mall Galleries
 * 2010 Printmakers Council, at the Bankside Gallery
 * 2012 Lost for Words, at University College Hospital Arts
 * 2012 Process and Innovation, British Printmaking Japan, at the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art (co-curator with Rebecca Salter)
 * 2016 Pie Factory Margate
 * 2018 Reconciliations, The Exchange, Bush House, King’s College London and The Knapp Gallery, Regent's University London
 * 2020 9th International Printmaking Biennial, Douro, Portugal

Selected public collections

 * Diocese, Dresden
 * Herbert Art Gallery and Museum
 * Royal College of Art, London
 * Victoria & Albert Museum, London
 * The Women's Art Collection, Murray Edwards College, Cambridge