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David’s History Mystery

Ludwid Hirschfeld Mack
Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack: Boat, 1962
Monotype, 24.5 x 27.5 cm
Sold Deutscher-Menzies 2006, $2,400 IBP
Image and data Australian Art Sales Digest

During his visit to the Art Gallery of New South Wales yesterday, David came across a painting by Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack … who? Exactly, an artist all too little known, yet the only Bauhaus student to end up in Australia. Sent here as an ‘enemy alien’ in 1940 from Britain, Hirschfeld Mack (1893-1965) had studied under the greats including Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and Johannes Itten in Weimar, and he was apprenticed to Lyonel Feininger as a print maker. The Klee influences in his print-making are obvious.

Hirschfeld Mack became an inspirational teacher to his students at Geelong Grammar School, and died at Allambie Heights on Sydney’s Northern Beachs in 1965. His works rarely appear at auction.

Read more on this remarkable artist at ADB online.

4 thoughts on “David’s History Mystery”

  1. Pingback: Dave's Faves: Menzies Art Auction 20 March 2014 | Banziger Hulme

  2. Tracy Le Cornu

    Hi Dave,

    Have you seen the Hirshfeld Mack in Menzies’, 20th March auction? Lot 100.

    A lovely example from 1963.

  3. I bought that painting and remember paying $4,000 odd for it with the next, similarly lovely Hirschfeld-Mack selling for much less. But I guess if they say it was $2,600 it probably was!

    I’m the son of a Dunera Boy – the Dunera being the prison ship on which Hirschfeld-Mack was transported to Australia.

  4. Pingback: Dunera Lives | Club Troppo

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