Martha Grünenwaldt, born on the Walloon side of the Brabant region, spent her childhood playing the violin with her father, an itinerant musician, and rarely attended school. She married a musician when she was twenty-three and worked in a factory until the birth of her daughter. When in 1937 her marriage broke up, Martha Grünenwaldt started travelling with her daughter, playing the violin on terraces of cafes. In the end of the 1940s, her husband got the custody of their daughter and Martha worked as a housekeeper in a castle where she was not allowed to play the violin. In 1968, her daughter asked her to move in with her. In 1981, when she turned seventy-one years, Martha Grünenwaldt started drawing on the back of posters and on retrieved wallpaper, using gouaches, colored pencils and ball-point pen. She drew exclusively women... which became flowers... which became animals... which became birds...