On at the Museum of Sydney, HARRY SEIDLER: PAINTING TOWARDS ARCHITECTURE is a fascinating display, a homage really, to a great man whose vision influenced Sydney’s cityscape enormously. The exhibitions is comprised of paintings, sculpture, building models and photography, most of which is located in the museum’s Focus Gallery on level three.
The exhibition features much work that has never been seen before, and highlights Seidler’s collaborations with other visionaries including Frank Stella, Marcel Breuer, Josef Albers, Pier Luigi Nervi. Alexander Calder, Max Dupain and Lin Utzon. Photographer Max Dupain was one of Seidler’s longest standing friend and collaborators with their friendship lasting fifty years.
Seidler said of his work in an International Architects conference in Singapore:
“Architecture is and always was above all, an art form…an interrelation and interdependence exists between all the visual arts.’ (1982)
His life is chronicled from his fleeing Austria to Great Britain, where he was then interned as an enemy alien in 1940. The British authorities then shipped him to Canada, where his internment continued in Quebec, simply because he was born in Vienna.
Seidler later relocated to Winnipeg where he attended the School of Architecture in Manitoba, Canada. He later attended the Harvard School of Design and worked in the US and South America before his mother lured him to Australia to design a home for her. This home would come to be known as Rose Seidler House, on Sydney’s north shore.
Highlights of the exhibition? There is a fantastic lego model of the Seidler designed Australia Square building by Ryan McNaught. There are also a number of stunning Max Dupain black and white photographs of Seidler’s buildings, Dupain more than anyone chronicled Seidler’s life and work, and the end result is impressive.
The exhibition at The Museum of Sydney, corner of Phillip and Bridge Streets, is running until 8th March 2015.
This review by Joy Minter was first published on her website- http;//www.thebuzzfromsydney.com