Deborah Klein, an established Australian painter and printmaker whose woodblock and linocut prints have been widely published, was born in Melbourne in 1951. She spent her childhood and early adult years living in the seaside suburb of St Kilda before leaving Australia to live in London from 1973 to 1980, also travelling to Europe and the US. Following her return to Melbourne, she completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Printmaking, at Chisholm Institute of Technology (1982-84) and a Graduate Diploma at Gippsland Institute of Advanced Education (1987-88). Relief printmaking became an integral part of Klein’s artistic practice for the next decade. As Diane Soumilas described, Klein drew inspiration from the graphic works of Australian relief printmakers from 1920s and 1930s, including Barbara Hanrahan. In the late 1980s, Klein made a suite of linocuts based on the prostitute Pirate Jenny in The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. Rather than retaining the backdrop of Brecht’s imagined Soho, London, Klein depicted Private Jenny in settings from St Kilda, the landmarks of which repeatedly appeared in the artist’s imagery.
In 1995-1997 Deborah Klein completed a Master of Arts degree by research at the Monash University, Gippsland with the guidance of artist Euan Heng, a long time mentor, having also written the foreword to her 1989 publication The Pirate Jenny Prints (Port Jackson Press, Melbourne). Klein’s interest in cinema, especially the work of directors Hitchcock, Welles and Wilder, and particularly film noir, a subject of research in her Masters degree, provided inspiration for a group of works known as the Film Noir series, depicting glamorous women in dark scenes characteristic of the named cinematic genre. Around the turn of the twenty-first century braided hair emerged as a central motif in Klein’s oeuvre. This artist is also known for her butterfly and moth iconography, with her later Moth Masks series (2007) presenting women with their faces veiled by the spread wings of moths of different species. Quoted in an interview with Melissa Hart in April 2008, Klein described how her work arises from extensive research, where, for example, she examined countless images of moths for her aforementioned series. Furthermore, Klein’s artistic practice is notably broad, moving between large scale paintings and works on paper to smaller intimate panels variously derived from Elizabethan and Stuart portrait miniatures, connoisseur’s cabinets and Victorian mourning jewellery.
Deborah Klein’s work has been presented in several solo exhibitions since 1987 (Linocuts, Tynte Gallery, Adelaide, SA), with prominent examples including ‘Forget Me Knots,’ Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne (2007) and ‘Deborah Klein: Out of the Past 1995-2007’ (2008), which was a survey show touring Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum, Art Gallery of Ballarat, Warrnambool Art Gallery and Deakin University Art Gallery, Victoria. Interestingly, the title, ‘Out of the Past,’ was borrowed from the 1947 film noir classic directed by Jacques Tourneur. Klein has also participated in various group shows in Australia and overseas such as ‘Luna Park and the Art of Mass Delirium’ (1998), held at Museum of Modern Art at Heide, Victoria, ‘People in a Landscape: Contemporary Australian Prints’ (2000-2003), which toured galleries in several countries such as Thailand, Germany, Switzerland and Russia, and the ‘Contemporary Australian Drawing’ exhibition at (2012) the University of the Arts, London, UK and Langford 120 Gallery, Melbourne.
Klein has received several awards throughout her career, including the Acquisitive Award, Fleming Muntz Albury Art Prize (2002) and Small Tapestries, Victorian Tapestry Workshop, Melbourne (2007). Earlier, in 1996, Reflections, a black, red and white linocut of four men’s torsos with a woman behind seen reflected in a car window, was Highly Commended in the 1996 Silk Cut Acquisitive Award for Linocut Prints (Moorabbin, Vic., 1996). Listed among Klein’s artist residencies are an Australia Council Studio Residency at the Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris that she received in 1993 and posts at The Art Vault, Mildura, Victoria (2009, 2011).
In 1996 Klein was commissioned to illustrate the children’s picture book The Greatest Treasure of Charlemagne the King by Nadia Wheatley, published by Scholastic Australia in 1997. Klein later wrote and illustrated her own publications. In 2009 she founded Moth Woman Press, through which she has published zines and limited edition books, beginning with There was once… The collected fairy tales, a small anthology of thirteen original stories illustrated with prints, paintings and drawings. Furthermore, Klein’s other activities have included teaching at RMIT University in the Printmaking Department (1999-2001, 2003-2007) and the Drawing Department (2004-2008).
Deborah Klein’s work is held in numerous public, university and private collections including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; Bendigo Art Gallery, Victoria and Baillieu Library Print Collection, University of Melbourne.
- Writers:
-
ecwubben
- Date written:
- 1996
- Last updated:
- 2012
