Design and Art Australia Online

sculptor, art historian and critic, came to Sydney from Frankfurt-on-Main in her native Germany in 1930 and quickly became prominent as a professional sculptor and, even more unusual, as a knowledgeable advocate of modernist art. Lange had produced a number of Art Deco-style medallions in Germany during the 1920s, and she received several commissions for similar small-scale work after her arrival in Sydney. These included a commission from Holy Trinity Church, Erskineville, for a terracotta jubilee medallion and an altar candlepiece based on Sturt’s desert pea which was to be cast in bronze.

In April 1932 she showed work in an 'Exhibition of Progressive Art’ at the Modern Art Centre in Sydney and in November exhibited a plaster figure, Meditation , in an exhibition simply called 'Seventeen Modern Artists’, again at the Modern Art Centre. Assisted by Edith Lanser, Lange made fifteen marionette figures for a three-act production, enabling her to present her own theatrical version of the Bible story in 1932-33. The first performance was at Burdekin House, Sydney, on 29 November 1932.

In July 1934 she exhibited two pieces of sculpture, The Heavy Plait (a small bronze) and Seraph of Light (a plaster figurine), in the Women Artists of Australia Exhibition at the Education Department Gallery in Sydney. The following year she designed and carved a Christmas crib for St James’s Church, King Street, which included seven painted plaster figures. Two of these, Young Shepherd and Madonna (AGNSW), were later shown in 'Exhibition I’ at David Jones Gallery (17 August-2 September 1939). She carved a cedar relief panel for the Sydney Teachers College in 1937 and in 1940 designed a memorial birdbath in cast stone for the Special School at Glenfield, but produced no more major work after that date. From 1947 until her retirement in 1954, she taught art at Frensham School, Mittagong.

Lange is remembered today for her insistent promotion of modern art. She published four articles in Art in Australia between May 1936 and March 1941 and was frequently quoted in the Sydney press. Throughout the 1930s and ’40s she made a living giving illustrated public lectures on all aspects of the history of art: at Sydney University, the Art Gallery of NSW, for the Contemporary Art Society (after it was formed in 1939) and elsewhere. During this period she was closely involved with the Crowley-Fizelle studio in George Street, associating with such artists as Frank and Margel Hinder , Ralph Balson, Frank Medworth, Grace Crowley , Gerald Lewers and Rah Fizelle. In 1939 she wrote the foreword to their Exhibition I catalogue, calling hopefully but prematurely for the 'abandoning [of] the representation of objects in order to establish a new realm of visual existence … this leads step by step to “abstract Art”’.

Writers:

Batchen, Geoffrey

Date written:

1995

Last updated:

2011