Design and Art Australia Online

Cartoonist and author, was born in Dresden and grew up in Nazi Germany and in communist East Germany. At the age of 15 he escaped to the West and became an apprentice cabinet-maker in Hamburg. He soon changed career direction, went to art school and after graduating worked for various advertising agencies in Frankfurt. He migrated to Australia in 1959 and worked as a fruit picker, a factory hand, and as a fettler on the Queensland railways. Later he worked for several printers and advertising agencies in Melbourne before opening Unigraphic, his own art studio, in 1966. It operated for eight years.

In 1974 Heimann protested against French atmospheric nuclear testing by sailing his yacht La Flor into the Mururoa testing area – a story related in his book Knocking on Heaven’s Door. He spent the next two years living on his boat on the Pacific, visiting many islands and often sailing single-handed. He had a narrow escape when his boat turned over in the Tasman and later when pursued by French agents in Tahiti. Rolf finally met and married Lila, a Samoan woman, and they returned together to Australia in 1976. They have two children.

Since then he has contributed cartoons to various Australian and international publications using his Samoan name, 'Lofo’. Early cartoons appeared in Nation Review, eg Sacred Ground 10 November 1978 (included in Christine Dixon, not ill.), and in Overland, eg Publishing Errors, a series of four joke drawings about Angus & Robertson, OUP, Penguin and Roland Harvey, no.145 (summer 1996), 56. As a member of the Australian Black and White Artists’ Club, Lofo has three small cartoons in the Mitchell Library’s ABWAC collection (PxD 586): 'cartoonists [asleep] during lecture on humour, third part’, pub. Inkspot 28, 'two otherwise truth-loving cartoonists upon discovering that their work hadn’t been included in the exhibition…/ “I didn’t want to send in my best work, y’see, and lose it…”/ “I don’t think I sent in anything this time”, pub. Inkspot 29, and a cartoon of a cocktail party where all the guests’ heads are cameras. (The first two were in the SH Ervin’s 1999 B/W art exhibition and ill. Kerr.) An original undated cartoon for Australian Business is at ML PXD 739.

Heimann edited No Fission: a collection of anti-nuclear cartoons by Australian artists (Albert Park, Vic.: Access Magazine in assoc. Melbourne Bookworkers Club, 1983), which included his own “...Tell them to form an opinion. Opinions get things moving.” (ill Swain, p.180). With Jim Bridges (b.1950) he compiled Australia, the cartoon (Carlton, Vic.: McCulloch, 1988). He has published at least two anthologies of his own cartoons: Unfair to Hippocrits and No Emus for Antarctica. Four 'Lofo’ cartoons are included in Kaz Cooke (ed.), Beyond a Joke: The Anti-Bicentenary Cartoon Book (Penguin Books, 1988), 13, 129, 134 and 137 (Aborigines laughing at the Indigenous-inspired decorations of a caucasian Australian’s house and garden).

Under his own name, Rolf Heimann writes adult novels, e.g. Wattle and Dope (Sydney: A&R, 1988), and books for children with Roland Harvey books (since 1987); For Eagle Eyes Only was rapidly followed by Amazing Mazes and Preposterous Puzzles. 'Twenty-two books and four million sales later [in 2001], he is recognised as one of Australia's best known and loved children’s author/illustrators. His Amazing Mazes, a unique combination of challenging and fascinating puzzles and mazes and intricate and detailed illustrations, have been particularly successful. International editions of Rolf’s books have been published throughout Europe, USA and Asia.’

Rolf Heimann comments (now unidentifiable website 2001):

“As a child I was frequently in trouble, and was even expelled from the communist youth organisation. My most embarrassing childhood experience was winning a major amateur art prize with a watercolour that was copied from a book, causing a major scandal in the provincial capital of Cottbus. This was an adult art competition; I missed out entering the children’s art competition because the judges thought my work was so sophisticated that it must have been done by my father.

“The major turnaround in my attitude to art came about when painting decorations on buses in Tahiti. For the first time I tasted the instant gratification of seeing my work admired. I enjoyed being in demand rather than fruitlessly begging gallery owners to have a look at my abstract masterpieces.

“I often did drawings as a means of establishing contact with the local people, especially when not speaking the language. Usually a crowd gathered, mainly children, and they were really excited when I put things into the picture such as friends posing or relatives crossing the lagoon in their boat. The result was that after an hour of drawing the picture was full of people, boats, bikes, dogs, birds etc, quite unlike the almost deserted scenery, simply because I felt I was expected to capture every moving thing temporarily coming into view.”

Writers:

Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1996

Last updated:

2007