Background
Mark Strizic was born on March 25, 1927 in Berlin, Germany. He was the son of Zdenko and Henrietta (Liedke) Strizic. In 1934, in reaction to Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor, the family fled to Zagreb, Yugoslavia (now Croatia).
(Matcham Skipper (1921-2011) was born in Melbourne and stu...)
Matcham Skipper (1921-2011) was born in Melbourne and studied at the Victorian artists' colony Monsalvat under the tutelage of its founder, the artist and philosopher Justus Jorgensen. Matcham Skipper was known for his proficiency in a variety of arts, including film-making, metalwork, jewellery-making, silversmithing, and clay modelling. teaching the two latter disciplines at Monsalvat. His wrought-iron screens can be seen at the front entrance to the Australian National University's H. C. Coombs building.
1963
(Norma Redpath (1928-2013), the sculptor, studied in her n...)
Norma Redpath (1928-2013), the sculptor, studied in her native Melbourne at the Swinburne Technical College and RMIT. In the mid-fifties she travelled and studied in Europe, returning to Melbourne to exhibit at the annual Victorian Sculptors' Association shows while teaching at a girls' school and at Swinburne Technical College. In 1962 she took up a scholarship in Italy, where she worked in bronze-casting factories and lived in Milan. Henceforth Italy was her second home, and Italian her second language. From 1951 onward Redpath received many commissions for public sculptures. Her Canberra works include the spectacular Treasury Fountain (1965-1969), opposite the National Library, and the Extended Column at the Canberra School of Music at the ANU, the design of which serves as the basis of the School's logo. Redpath was a generous and energetic advocate for Australian sculpture throughout her life.
1964
(John Perceval (1923-2000), painter and ceramicist, helped...)
John Perceval (1923-2000), painter and ceramicist, helped Arthur Boyd to re-establish the Murrumbeena family pottery during the 1940s. Through this dynamic association, Perceval became the youngest member of the Angry Penguins, an avant-garde circle of Melbourne painters. Perceval's painting is characterised by an exuberant use of colour and vigorous application of paint. The Perceval painting shown in this photograph transposes and manipulates the nightmarish Christ Carrying the Cross by the 15th-16th century painter Hieronymus Bosch.
1967
(Sir Ian Potter (1902-1994), company director, stockbroker...)
Sir Ian Potter (1902-1994), company director, stockbroker, merchant banker, and philanthropist, was the founder of the Ian Potter Foundation, one of Australia's major philanthropic bodies. Potter was born into a family of English wool merchants trading in Australia. After studying economics at Sydney University, in 1936 he moved to Melbourne to found the stockbroking firm Ian Potter & Co. Over his career he served on the boards of some 25 companies, travelling often to the USA and Europe. He retired from Potter and Co in 1967, three years after creating the Ian Potter Foundation. During his lifetime alone, its grants amounted to more than $22 million, and he himself made large donations to the arts, hospitals, universities, sciences, social welfare, and environment and heritage conservation until he died. Knighted in 1962, Potter was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Science in 1978 for his 'conspicuous service to the cause of science'.
1968
(Sir Charles Moses (1900-1988) was General Manager of the ...)
Sir Charles Moses (1900-1988) was General Manager of the Australian Broadcasting Commission from 1935 to 1965. Born in Lancaster and educated at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, he migrated to Australia in 1922 after four years in the British army. He grew fruit and vegetables near Bendigo and sold cars through rural Victoria and the Riverina before beginning his career as a sports commentator for the ABC in 1930. It was Moses who introduced studio sound effects of the bat, ball, and crowd to cricket broadcasting. During World War 2 he served in Singapore and Malaysia, but he returned to the helm at the ABC in 1944, remaining until relieved by fellow former sports commentator Talbot Duckmanton. Moses was a top sportsman himself. Amongst his many other interests, he was President of the Amateur Athletic Association of NSW from 1948 to 1969, President of the NSW Rugby Club from 1957 to 1963, and served on the Board of the Elizabethan Trust from 1954 to 1984.
1968
(Inge King AO (1915–2016) was at the forefront of the deve...)
Inge King AO (1915–2016) was at the forefront of the development of non-figurative sculpture in Australia and remained one of Australia’s outstanding sculptors into her 80s – a time in her life during which she continued to develop innovative work. Born in Berlin, King studied sculpture in Germany before fleeing to England after Kristallnacht in late 1938. After further study in Glasgow, she settled permanently in Australia in 1951, becoming one of the founding members of the influential 'Centre 5' group whose stated aim was to 'help foster greater public awareness of contemporary sculpture in Australia'. The group also advocated the advancement of abstraction in sculpture, which by the 1970s was characterised by the use of industrial techniques and materials such as sheet steel. Inge King held more than 26 solo exhibitions, including a retrospective at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1992 and one at the National Gallery of Australia in 2015, and she participated in more than 60 group shows in London, New York, Australia and New Zealand.
1968
(Douglas Carnegie was the scion of a family whose fortune ...)
Douglas Carnegie was the scion of a family whose fortune derived from a piano manufacturing company. He grew up in Melbourne and in 1941 joined the AIF when dispatched to the Middle East, he became one of the Rats of Tobruk. His army career was effectively ended when he contracted spinal meningitis and was repatriated to Australia on a hospital ship. On his recovery, doctors advised him to live in the country and in 1944 he purchased the 1000-hectare property, Kildrummie. Here he became legendary for his bloodline of bred poll Hereford cattle in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1979 the Carnegies sold the cattle station and moved back to Melbourne where Douglas supported the many activities of his wife Margaret, a major collector of Aboriginal art. He became an honorary consultant of Lincoln Gerontology Centre of Latrobe University, actively volunteering to visit numerous hospitals taking up the challenge for occupations for the elderly. He died on 6 February 1998.
1968
(Sir Gustav Nossal (b. 1931) is a medical scientist. Born ...)
Sir Gustav Nossal (b. 1931) is a medical scientist. Born in Austria, he emigrated with his family in 1939. He began his career in 1955 at Melbourne's Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research under immunologist Sir Macfarlane Burnet. Ten years later he succeeded Burnet as Director of the Institute. Under his 31-year leadership, its research broadened to include cancer, multiple sclerosis, malaria, and organ transplants. During much of this period, Nossal was also Professor of Medical Biology at the University of Melbourne; from 1994 to 1998 he was President of the Australian Academy of Science. Since 1990 he has chaired the body advising the World Health Organisation on vaccination and immunization, assisted the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and has become a principal partner of Foursight Associates, which promotes and facilitates the transformation of Australian medical research into commercially viable ventures. Knighted in 1977 for his work in immunology, Nossal became a Companion of the Order of Australia in 1989, the Australian of the Year in 2000. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences, and a Member of the French Academie des Sciences.
1979
(Robin Boyd (1919-1971), architect, writer and social comm...)
Robin Boyd (1919-1971), architect, writer and social commentator, tried harder than anyone else to persuade Australia to embrace Modernism. Born in Melbourne into the famous Boyd family of artists and writers, he designed his first houses in the late 1940s and published Victorian Modern in 1947. Becoming noted for his remarkable domestic houses, Boyd was the Director of the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects Small Homes Service from 1947 to 1953. During this period he wrote weekly articles on architecture for the Age. In 1956 Walter Gropius invited him to take a teaching position in Boston, but he returned to Australia a few years later. Boyd's best-known book, Australian Ugliness, was published in 1960. A Life Fellow of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects, in 1969 he was awarded the RAIA Gold Medal. The Institute's annual national domestic architecture award is named in his honour.
Mark Strizic was born on March 25, 1927 in Berlin, Germany. He was the son of Zdenko and Henrietta (Liedke) Strizic. In 1934, in reaction to Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor, the family fled to Zagreb, Yugoslavia (now Croatia).
In Zagreb, Yugoslavia (now Croatia) Mark Strizic began to study physics and geology. At the end of WW2, he fled to Austria as a refugee following the liberation of Yugoslavia to escape the Communist regime. As there was a five-year waiting period to emigrate to the United States, he decided to go instead to Australia. He departed Naples on the converted Australian Navy seaplane carrier Hellenic Prince, arriving in Melbourne on Anzac Day, 25 April 1950.
Strizic's good spoken English soon gained him a position as a clerk with the Victorian Railways Reclamation Department, and he resumed his studies in physics part-time at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.
Mark Strizic bought his first camera, a Diaxette, and began to photograph his environment, developing a love of strong light. He enjoyed shooting into the sun contre-jour and capturing low afternoon side-lighting effects for their high-contrast graphic silhouettes in black and white prints, and that became his signature style for his historically and culturally significant photographs of post-war Melbourne.
Photography was a tool Mark Strizic used in his studies in physics, which in 1957 he abandoned for a career in the medium, in which he was encouraged by his father; Zdenko Strižić had only recently exhibited his own collection of photographs, of the traditional architecture of Zagreb, and published a limited-edition book of high-quality reproductions of them, Svjetla i sjene ("Light and Shadows").
Mark Strizic and James S. Bigham formed a partnership in a photography business. Friendship with David Saunders, a Senior Lecturer in Architecture at the University of Melbourne who was then acting Assistant Director at the National Gallery of Victoria, provided Strizic with increasingly frequent photography commissions. In 1957 Saunders introduced him to Leonard French, an artist, and the Gallery's Exhibitions Officer, who asked him to document exhibitions, including the 1959 retrospective of cabinet maker Schulim Krimper’s furniture.
Postwar industrialization in Australia led then to work for mining company BHP, civil engineers Humes Limited and manufacturers McPhersons, photographing the plants, manufacturing, products, and workers for annual reports and advertising, while the concurrent housing boom provided further opportunities.
Mark Strizic dissolved his partnership with Bigham on the latter's retirement in 1960, and established his studio, neighbouring those of other photographers, in Collins Street, Melbourne in what was known as "The Paris End".
Mark Strizic taught photography at tertiary level in Melbourne from 1978, lecturing at a number of tertiary education institutions including Preston (Phillip) Institute of Technology (1975-1977); Melbourne College of Advanced Education (now the University of Melbourne) (Lecturer in Charge of Photography 1977-1982); and as a part-time lecturer in Photography at the Victorian College of the Arts (1982-1984).
Inge King
(Inge King AO (1915–2016) was at the forefront of the deve...)
1968Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet
(Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet (1899-1985), medical scientis...)
1968Sir Ian Potter
(Sir Ian Potter (1902-1994), company director, stockbroker...)
1968Matcham Skipper
(Matcham Skipper (1921-2011) was born in Melbourne and stu...)
1963Robin Boyd
(Robin Boyd (1919-1971), architect, writer and social comm...)
John Perceval
(John Perceval (1923-2000), painter and ceramicist, helped...)
1967Norma Redpath
(Norma Redpath (1928-2013), the sculptor, studied in her n...)
1964Sir Charles Moses
(Sir Charles Moses (1900-1988) was General Manager of the ...)
1968Douglas Carnegie
(Douglas Carnegie was the scion of a family whose fortune ...)
1968Gustav Nossal
(Sir Gustav Nossal (b. 1931) is a medical scientist. Born ...)
1979In 1952 Mark Strizic married Hungarian-born Sue. They settled in Richmond, subsequently moving to South Yarra, South Melbourne, and Kew, and finally to Wallan, in country Victoria, living there until his death in 2012. Sue Strizic died in 2015.