Product Code Database
Karl ( Karol) Duldig (29 December 1902 – 11 August 1986) was a Jewish sculptor. Born in Poland, he and his family fled Vienna in 1938 following the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, eventually settling in Australia. As a sculptor, he was instrumental in introducing the Modernist style to an Australian audience, won the 1956 Victorian Sculptor of the Year Award, and had an annual lecture established in his name by the National Gallery of Victoria.
In 1923, he was Austrian national champion in table tennis. He also played football as a goalkeeper for Hakoah Vienna, and was one of Austria's top tennis players. Karl Duldig sculpture Bronze Editions Catalogue, Duldig Studio, 2021.
In 1931, he married artist and inventor Slawa Duldig, who had patented an improved compact folding umbrella in 1929. "To the other side of the world", National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism. Their only child, Eva Duldig, was born in 1938. Eva became a champion Australian tennis player who played in Wimbledon, the French Championships, the Australian Open, and at the Maccabiah Games in Israel where she won two gold medals, and was founder of the present-day Duldig Studio, an artists' house museum in Melbourne, Australia.
The family then left for Singapore by boat in April 1939, where initially he and Slawa ran an art school and he restored paintings, and completed commissions for the Sultan of Johor and Aw Boon Haw. In Singapore, however, six months after their arrival the British arrested them, because they had German identity papers. Austria had been annexed by Germany in March 1938 in the Anschluss, and therefore the family and all other Austrians by law had become citizens of the German Reich. The British colonial government classified them as "citizens of an enemy country", and they were deported by boat from Singapore to Australia in September 1940.Yeo Mang Thong (2019). Migration, Transmission, Localisation; Visual Art in Singapore (1866–1945), National Gallery Singapore.
From 1945 to 1967, Duldig was art master at Mentone Grammar School. As a sculptor, he exhibited at Victorian Sculptors' Society, and was featured in the 1956 Olympic Games art festival, the Mildura Sculpture Triennials, and the Adelaide Festival of Arts.Ken Scarlett 1980). Australian Sculptors Works of his are displayed in the City of Caulfield, Melbourne General Cemetery War Memorial, Council House, the Australian National Gallery, and the Australian War Memorial.Ashley Browne, Dashiel Lawrence (2018). People of the Boot; The Triumphs and Tragedy of Australian Jews in Sport, Hybrid Publishers. His works are also shown at the National Gallery of Victoria, the McClelland Gallery and Sculpture Park, and the Newcastle Region Art Gallery.
He often used a Modernist style.Tanja Schult (2009). A Hero’s Many Faces; Raoul Wallenberg in Contemporary Monuments In 1956 Duldig won the Victorian Sculptor of the Year Award. In 1968, his bronze statue in memory of fallen sportspeople who were killed in the Holocaust was unveiled in Tel Aviv, Israel. "Former Jewish Athletes Plan Memorial to Teammates Slain by Nazis", JTA Daily News Bulletin, 1 March 1968.
After his wife died in 1975, in 1983 he married Rosia Ida Dorin.
In 1986, an annual lecture was established in his name by the National Gallery of Victoria.
In 2002, his daughter Eva founded the Duldig Studio in East Malvern, a not-for-profit public museum and art gallery, in her former family home. It displays the works of her parents.
Karl's granddaughter, Tania de Jong, born in 1964, is an Australian soprano, social entrepreneur, and businesswoman. In 1965, after Tania's birth, the family returned to Melbourne, and after she gave birth to two more children Duldig found it challenging to maintain her tennis. After her tennis career, she worked as a recreation consultant, a writer, and a designer of children's play spaces.
In 2022, Karl's great-granddaughters Andrea and Emma de Jong ran in the 2022 Maccabiah Games, and Emma won the 800 metres and 1,500-metre run as a junior.
|
|
