Australia thanks Karl, Slawa & Eva Duldig

                     

Slawa on Sigmund Jaray furniture in the Duldig flat in Vienna in 1931

Slawa, with her sister Rella in Vienna, 1938.

Slawa and Karl in Vienna in 1938.

Karl Duldig (1902-1986) was born in Przemysl (now Poland). In 1914 his family moved to Vienna where he learned to love sculp­ture, studying later at Kunstgewerbeschule under An­ton Hanak (1921-5). Karl saluted Hanak’s teaching in Crouch­ing Fig­ure 1923, car­v­ed from soapstone.

He continued studying at the Akademie der Bildenen Künste (1925-9). In 1931 in Vienna, Karl married fellow art student Slawa Horowitz (1902-75). Sigmund Jaray, famed Austrian furniture des­igners, was com­miss­ion­ed by Slawa to design furniture for their flat, decorated in the Vien­nese Workshops style. Mean­time Sl­awa invented amodern foldable umbrel­la, hold­ing the patent for 10 years.

The musical examined pre-war Vienna, with fluky ev­ents that helped them survive, starting from Nazi Austria af­t­er the 1938 Anschluss. And 1938 was the year daughter Eva was born! In 3 con­­tinents & 3 gen­erat­ions, the musical reflect­ed both the losses that dis­located fam­il­ies suff­er­ed, and the ch­all­enges faced when ad­apt­ing to new lives.

Like others in 1938 & 1939, the Duldigs had to give their surviv­ing assets to Nazis and flee! Sl­awa's adored sister and bro­ther in law Aurelie & Ignaz Laisné survived the Holocaust by hiding in Paris, with Karl’s artworks stashed in their cellar.

There was a brief time in Switzerland when Karl was playing in a ten­n­is tournament. In 1938 the fam­ily grabbed the chance to get to Singa­p­ore, working in an art school in the British colony. But in Sep 1940 they were decl­ared Enemy Aliens by the Br­it­ish who dep­ort­ed them to Aus­t­ralia.

Because Australia was also at war, the family was interned at Tatura Camp in rural Victoria for 2 years, The camp was peace­ful but isol­at­ed. While Karl did kitchen duty in 2nd AIF 8th Employment Co., he carved Mother and Child 1942 from pot­atoes with a pocket knife. Later he cast them in bronze.

Released in April 1942, the family settled in urban Melbour­ne and be­c­ame Aust­ral­­ian citizens post-war. Karl held his first solo show at Koz­minsky’s (1947) and became art master (1945-67) at a prominant Mel­b­our­ne gram­mar school, while creating a small ceramics busin­ess. Karl ex­hib­ited re­g­ularly with the Victor­ian Sculptors’ Soc­iety and the imp­ortant Ad­el­aide Festival of Arts from 1960. Slawa’s work app­ear­ed in the major NGV 1990 exhibition, Vienna & Early C20th.

Eva de Jong-Duldig's book, 2017

Driftwood: escape and survival through art, was a book written by Eva Duldig in 2017. It followed the artists’ lives in pre-war Vien­na and their es­cape from Europe to Melbourne. And it offered an insight into the cultural life of Aus­t­ralia at a time of enormous political and art­is­tic change; a profound tran­­­sforming cont­rib­ution to the life of the nation through tal­ented immigrants. Note the enormous contr­ib­­ution mid­dle Euro­peans made to the national art scene. Yosl Berg­ner (left War­saw 1937); Wolfgang Siev­ers (Ger­many 1938); Ludwig Hir­schfeld-Mack (Berlin 1938); Mark Strizic (Germany post-war).

Driftwood was a new Australian musical, based on Eva’s book. Ad­ap­t­ed for the stage by play­wrig­ht Jane Bodie, it featured original music by Anthony Barn­hill, with lyrics by sop­rano Tania de Jong, and a fine cast directed by Wesley Enoch. Note that Eva’s real daught­er, Tania de Jong with the fabulous voice, played Eva’s mother Slawa in the musical. 

Karl and Slawa continued their art careers. Af­ter high school, Eva did physical educat­ion and arts at Mel­b­ourne Uni and worked as a teacher. Then her father, himself a highly ranked sports­man, en­couraged her into competitive tennis. The family moved near the Kooyong Tennis Courts, and in 1961 she reached Wimbledon’s quarter finals.

At the 1961 Maccabiah Games in Israel, she met her Dutch husband Henri and went to live in Holl­and. She became Nether­l­ands’ Na­tional Champion and repres­ented her new country at Wimbledon. They didn’t move back to Australia until after the bir­th of Eva’s first child in 1964.

With the talented European artists who were liv­ing 12,000 ks from home and speaking little English, Dul­dig helped de­fine the place of sculp­t­ure in Aust­ral­ian culture. He was very supp­ort­ive of younger artists, bec­oming first president (1962) of Ben Uri Society for the Arts aka Bezalel Fel­lowship of Arts. He was pre­s­id­ent (1977) of the Assoc­iation of Sculptors of Vict­oria. His last work was the Raoul Wallenberg monument 1985 at Kew Junction.

Duldig Studio in Melbourne

Before Karl died in 1986, he and Eva discussed what would hap­p­en to the house and collection. As custod­ian of her parents' leg­acy, Eva opened the home, sculpt­ure garden and art Studio in Malvern East up as a pub­l­ic mus­eum in 1996, showing the large coll­ection of fine and de­c­orative arts. And in the National Gall­ery Victoria.

In Karl Duldig and Vienna, Alison Inglis presented a paper at Vienna Art and Design symposium, NGV 2011. She show­ed his experience as an art student-scul­p­tor in Vienna pre-1939 was full of Secessionist values. The unex­pected recov­ery of all their Vien­n­ese art and other possess­ions in Mel­bourne suggested the Duldigs’ old lives wouldn’t be lost forev­er.

See artist Karl Duldig: Mitteleuropa in Australia