Mark Strizic

Mark Strizic (Croatian sp.: Strižić) was a 20th-century Croatian-Australian photographer and artist. Best known for his architectural and industrial photography, he was also a portraitist of significant Australians,[2] and fine art photographer and painter known for his multimedia mural work.

Mark Strizic
Born
Marko Strizic

(1928-04-19)19 April 1928
Berlin, Germany
Died8 December 2012(2012-12-08) (aged 84)[1]
Wallan, Victoria, Australia
NationalityAustralian
Educationself-taught
Known forPhotography
Notable work
(Tree and telegraph pole from "South Melbourne 1967–1972") (c.1967–72)
MovementModernism
Spouse(s)Sue

Strizic and other post-war immigrant photographers Wolfgang Sievers, Henry Talbot, Richard Woldendorp, Bruno Benini, Margaret Michaelis, Dieter Muller, David Mist and Helmut Newton brought modernism to Australian photography.[3][4]

Early life & migration

Marko Strizic was born in 1928 in Berlin, where his father, Zdenko Strižić[5] (1902–1990), was studying and practising architecture (later becoming a Professor of Architecture[6]). His mother was a textile designer, trained in Berlin, who contributed to Zdenko's practice.[7] In 1934, in reaction to Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor, the family fled to Zagreb, Yugoslavia (now Croatia). There Strizic began to study physics and geology.

At the end of WW2, Strizic fled to Austria as a refugee following the liberation of Yugoslavia to escape the Communist regime. As there was a five-year waiting period to emigrate to the United States, he decided to go instead to Australia. He departed Naples on the converted Australian Navy seaplane carrier Hellenic Prince, arriving in Melbourne in April 1950. There his good spoken English soon gained him a position as a clerk with the Victorian Railways Reclamation Department,[8] and he resumed his studies in physics part-time at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

In 1952 he married Hungarian-born Sue. He settled in Richmond, subsequently moving with his wife to South Yarra, South Melbourne and Kew, and finally to Wallan, in country Victoria, living there until his death in 2012. In 2013 a bushfire destroyed his home and studio and his entire collection of prints, though fortunately the State Library of Victoria had acquired the majority of his negatives in 2007. Sue Strizic died in 2015.

Photography

Strizic bought his first camera, a Diaxette[9][10] and began to photograph his environment, developing a love of strong light which he found abundant under the clear skies of his adopted city.[11] He enjoyed shooting into the sun contre-jour, and capturing low afternoon side-lighting effects for their high-contrast graphic silhouettes in black and white prints,[12] and that became his signature style for his historically and culturally significant photographs of post-war Melbourne. His abandonment of physics in 1957 for a career in photography was encouraged by his father (who visited Melbourne in 1957 as guest professor at the School of Architecture Melbourne University); Zdenko Strizic had only recently exhibited his own collection of photographs, of the traditional architecture of Zagreb, and published a limited-edition book of high-quality reproductions of them, Svjetla i sjene ('Light and Shadows').[13]

Commercial career

Strizic and James S. Bigham formed a partnership in a photography business at 1 Beech St. Surrey Hills before moving it to Strizic's home at 1 Francis St., Richmond.[14] Friendship with David Saunders, (who had stayed with Strizic's parents in Yugoslavia in 1952[15]) a Senior Lecturer in Architecture at the University of Melbourne who was then acting Assistant Director at the National Gallery of Victoria, provided Strizic with increasingly frequent photography commissions. In 1957 Saunders introduced him to Leonard French, an artist and the Gallery's Exhibitions Officer, who asked him to document exhibitions, including the 1959 retrospective of cabinet maker Schulim Krimper’s furniture.[16] Postwar industrialisation in Australia led then to work for mining company BHP, civil engineers Humes Limited and manufacturers McPhersons, photographing the plants, manufacturing, products and workers for annual reports and advertising, while the concurrent housing boom provided further opportunities. Strizic dissolved his partnership with Bigham on the latter's retirement in 1960,[14] and established his studio, neighbouring those of other photographers, in Collins Street, Melbourne[17] in what was known as 'The Paris End'.[18]

Visual critique of Australian culture

Again through Saunders, in 1958, Strizic met modernist Robin Boyd of architectural firm Grounds, Romberg and Boyd, who became a major clients.[19] Boyd controversially criticised Australian suburban culture in his book The Australian Ugliness of 1960, and Strizic echoed these sentiments both in writing[20] and in his photography[21] began to illustrate Australians' disdain for their architectural heritage and their scant regard for the visual aesthetics of their urban environment amidst the destruction[22] of magnificent Gold Rush era buildings and verandahs and their replacement by high-rise modernist office-blocks.[23] This work was widely published in architectural books and journals but also illustrated social commentary during this period of a national identity crisis with frequent contributions of his photo-essays to Walkabout, Australia Today and other travel magazines (see below the range of books containing his photographs). In 1960 Strizic joined David Saunders to produce Melbourne: A Portrait, stating 'Its central thought is that while men make cities, the cities also affect the men.'[24] The Age book reviewer Richard Troy described Strizic's contribution; "The photography is startlingly imaginative and startlingly beautiful—beautiful, not in the sense of the word as movie-advertisement copy writers use it, but in the sense that truth is beautiful".[25]

Fine art

Having exhibited there with Athol Shmith in 1958, Strizic become the first photographer to exhibit solo at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1968[26] and the first whose work was acquired by the National Gallery of Australia.[2] In 1984 he became a full-time artist, photographer and designer and the winner of a number of photographic awards and grants and finding a market for large scale mural installations amongst corporate clients. He began combining, enlarging, cropping and transforming elements from his black and white negatives through montage, then colourising and posterising the monochrome images in the manner associated with Pop Art. Symbols of urban ugliness such as power poles and billboards were his subject matter and critical target in often apocalyptic imagery intended to provoke a social consciousness.[27] He was an early adopter of digital imaging techniques in producing such murals.[28][29][30] Strizic's work is represented in the Australian National Gallery and several state galleries and in corporate collections.[31] He was also a collector of significant Australian art himself.[32]

Portraitist

Strizic made portraits of significant Australians including academics, scientists and those involved in the arts and these are held in collections including those of the Australian National Gallery, the National Gallery of Victoria and the State Library of Victoria. The majority were shot in 1968 for the expensively produced 1,200 copy limited-edition book Involvement,[33] conceived by philanthropist Andrew Grimwade, with an introduction by Geoffrey Dutton.[34] The collaboration of Strizic with painter Clifton Pugh involved the photography of the 41 significant Australians included, whom Pugh painted during his career. The Strizic portraits were shown that year at the National Gallery of Victoria in a solo exhibition that was reviewed dismissively as 'posed' and 'self-conscious', by Melbourne Age painting critic Patrick McCaughey.[35] In his 1969 review of the book, writer Clive Turnbull enthused over the 'complementarity' of the portraits of the same people in the two different media.[36] Strizic used 35mm at a time when medium or large format was the norm for portraiture, and his use of long focal lengths, available light and aura-enhancing shallow depth of field sets the sitter into their environment.[37][30]

His output in the genre was considerable; those he photographed included Karl Duldig, Sir Ian Potter, Harold Hughan, Shulim Krimper, Clifford Last, Inge King, Lenton Parr, Fred Williams, Vincent Jomantas, Norma Redpath, John Brack, Ian B. Sprague, Dr Joseph Brown, Noel Counihan, Rudy Komon, T. Zikaras, Arthur Boyd, John Perceval, Rhonda Senbergs, David Roberts (photographer), Barry Humphries, Dr Ernest Fooks, Prof. Zdenko Strizic (father), Chief Librarian Colin Alexander McCallum, Marilyn Hill, Dr. E. Graeme Robertson, Dr. Noel Macainsh, Dr. Antal Zador, Geoffrey Dutton, Father Michael Scott, Professor A. R. Chisholm, John Howley, Barry Jones AO, Michael Shannon, Leonard French, Sir Charles Moses, Sir Macfarlane Burnet, Mayor of South Melbourne Doris Catherine Condon, Anne Hall, Asher Bilu, Charles Blackman, Alexander Buzo, Sir Samuel Wadham, Les Gray, Clifton Pugh, Peter O'Shaughnessy, Frank Dalby Davison, David Tolley, Owen Webster, John Olsen, Robin Boyd, Tim Burstall, Matcham Skipper, Professor Richard Downing, Georges Mora, and Tom Sanders.

Influence

Strizic taught photography at tertiary level in Melbourne from 1978, lecturing at a number of tertiary education institutions including Preston (Phillip) Institute of Technology (1975–1977); Melbourne College of Advanced Education (Lecturer in Charge of Photography 1977–1982); and as part-time lecturer in Photography at the Victorian College of the Arts (1982–1984).

Books by or illustrated by Strizic
  • Barrett, R. D. (2009). 1950–1975: Building Modern Australia (Vol. 8). Australia: Macmillan Education
  • Beatty, B., & Beatty, W. A. (1966). Around Australia with Bill Beatty. Cassell Australia.
  • Buckrich, Judith with Keith Dunstan, Rohan Storey and Marc Strizic (2005) Collins: The story of Australia’s premier street. Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne
  • Burstall, Tim. & Ryan, Patrick. 1968, Two thousand weeks [Book designed by Mark Strizic & George Smith] Sun Books, Melbourne.
  • Royal Victorian Institute of Architects. (1956). Guide to Victorian architecture, 1956: A brief illustrated record of architectural development in Victoria, and in Melbourne the capital. Melbourne: Royal Victorian Institute of Architects.
  • Edquist, H., & Black, R. (2009). The Architecture of Neil Clerehan. RMIT Publishing.
  • Gray, Garrick. & Strizic, Mark. & Steinward, Uwe. ([197-?]). The Garrick Australian picture book. Melbourne : G. Gray
  • Howley, John. & Strizic, Mark. (1971). The phallic totem witness series. [S.l : s.n]
  • Lane, Terence. & Strizic, Mark. & Krimper, Schulim. (1987). Schulim Krimper : cabinet-maker : a tribute. South Yarra, Vic. : Gryphon Books
  • Macainsh, Noel. and Pugh, Clifton. (1962) Clifton Pugh [photography by Mark Strizic] Georgian House, Melbourne
  • Kennedy, G. (1967). Graham Kennedy's Melbourne. Thomas Nelson (Australia).
  • Potts, J. D. S. (1966). Australian outrage: the decay of a visual environment. Ure Smith.
  • Pugh, Clifton. & Strizic, Mark. & Grimwade, Andrew Sheppard (1968). Involvement : the portraits of Clifton Pugh and Mark Strizic; The work. Melbourne : Sun Books
  • Spate, V. (1963). John Olsen. Georgian House.
  • Stirling, A. (1967). Melbourne in Colour and Black-and-white. Lansdowne.
  • Strizic, Mark. & Monash Gallery of Art. (2003). Mark Strizic : a journey in photography Wheelers Hill, Vic. : Monash Gallery of Art
  • Strizic, Mark. & Matthews, Emma. & Jones, Barry. & State Library of Victoria. (2009). Mark Strizic : Melbourne: marvellous to modern. Fishermans Bend, Vic. : Melbourne : Thames and Hudson Australia ; published in association with State Library of Victoria
  • National Gallery of Victoria (1964), Desk diary 1965 : the seasons, National Gallery of Victoria
  • Strizic, Mark. & Flinders University Art Museum. (1984). Town country and soul : photographic works by Mark Strizic. Bedford Park, S.A. : Flinders University Art Museum
  • Strizic, Mark. & Saunders, David. (1960). Melbourne : a portrait. Melbourne : Georgian House[38]

Selected exhibitions
  • 1958: Melbourne’s Twelve Best Buildings, National Gallery of Victoria (with Athol Shmith)
  • 1961: Photovision 1961, Museum of Modern Art Australia, [39]
  • 1963: Mark Strizic photography, Argus Gallery [Melbourne], 11–22 February.
  • 1968: Australian personalities – an exhibition of photographic portraits by Mark Strizic, Verdon Gallery, National Gallery of Victoria, 24 May-9 June.[35]
  • 1977: The fall of the shadow – Mark Strizic, Church Street Photographic Centre, Richmond, Melbourne, 16 November – 4 December.
  • 1984: Town, country and soul – photographic works by Mark Strizic, Gryphon Gallery [Melbourne], 26 March-13 April.
  • 1987: The 1950s – photographs by Mark Strizic, Gryphon Gallery [Melbourne], 16–20 October.
  • 1987: Photographs by John Cato, Wolfgang Sievers, Mark Strizic 1955–75 (Aspects of Victorian photography I), National Gallery of Victoria, Photography Gallery, third floor, 2 April-19 June.
  • 1998: Modern furniture Melbourne 1960s–1980s as photographed by Mark Strizic, The Cardigan Street Gallery, 12 December 1997 – 26 January
  • 1989: Mark Strizic – paintings and collages, Acland Street Art Gallery [St. Kilda, Victoria], 6 September-6 October
  • 1992: Melbourne life exhibition, Lower Melbourne Town Hall. 7–30.
  • 1993: Inner sanctum – Noel Flood – ceramic sculpture, Werner Hammerstingl – photography and mixed media, Mark Strizic – photography and mixed media, Doncaster Gallery [Melbourne], 3–21 December.
  • 1995: Melbourne in the '60s – an exhibition of photographs by Mark Strizic, Christine Abrahams Gallery [Richmond, Victoria], 14–31 August 1995.
  • 1995/6:Photographs by Mark Strizic; a selection from Melbourne in the '50s and '60s, Old Treasury Building, Melbourne, 8 December 1995 – 26 January 1996[40]
  • 1996: Unity of fragmentation – paintings on prepared canvas & associated works by Mark Strizic. Quadrivium, 2–50 Level 2 South, Queen Victoria Building, George Street, Sydney, 20 February-12 March.
  • 1997: Late modernism Melbourne – an exhibition of photographs by Mark Strizic, 1996, 12 December 1996 – 21 January.
  • 1999: Mark Strizic : contre jour, Lauraine Diggins Fine Art, 24 February–27 March.
  • 1999: Mark Strizic : contre jour, Greenaway Art Gallery, 31 March – 25 April. Catalogue essay by Emma Matthews.
  • 2006: Melbourne: Mid-century images, Gallery 101, 101 Collins Street Melbourne. 14 March – 1 April
  • 2012: As Modern as Tomorrow: Photographers in Postwar Melbourne, State Library of Victoria, Keith Murdoch Gallery 1 July 2011 – 5 February 2012

Work in Collections

Murals

Include:

  • The ICI (Australia) Research Mural. Inaugurated 8 August 1988.
  • Australian Pavilion, Spokane Expo. Commissioned by the Australian Government.
  • Queensland University Sports Club
  • Flinders University Medical Centre.
  • Monash University Library, Clayton, Melbourne.
  • Boronia Library, Boronia, Melbourne.

Awards

The Visual Art/ Craft Board's Emeritus Fellowship 1993 (also awarded that year to Olive Cotton, Nora Heysen and Peter Rushforth)

See also

References
  1. "Marko (Mark) STRIZIC Obituary: View Marko STRIZIC's Obituary by Herald Sun". Tributes.heraldsun.com.au. 19 April 1928. Archived from the original on 19 February 2013. Retrieved 9 January 2013.
  2. Elliot, Simon Poet of the Fleeting Moment in Portrait magazine, publication of the National Portrait Gallery of Australia, online archive http://www.portrait.gov.au/magazine/article.php?articleID=228&author=9
  3. Ennis, Helen (2007) Photography and Australia London Reaktion Books, ISBN 186189323X, 9781861893239 p.83-84
  4. entry, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney archive http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/?irn=319150
  5. Portrait of his father by Mark Strizic at http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an12153872
  6. He was a lecturer in the Brunswick School, an influential German school of architecture of the postwar period de:Braunschweiger Schule
  7. Professor's Wife From Yugoslavia The Age. 15 May 1957, p. 5 https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=BlURAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ppUDAAAAIBAJ&dq=strizic&pg=7124%2C2045150
  8. Conversation with Strizic recorded in Matthews, Emma (2009) Mark Strizic Melbourne: Marvellous to Modern. Melbourne, Thames and Hudson ISBN 9780500500194
  9. Matthews, Emma (2009) Mark Strizic Melbourne: Marvellous to Modern quotes Strizic as saying his first camera was a Diaxette, bought, she comments, "from a chemist shop in Collins Street…a purchase the couple could ill afford at the time". The camera was manufactured by the small DIAX KAMERA WERK in Ulm, Donau, Germany, and was an amateur 35 mm viewfinder (no rangefinder) model, similar to a Contax, with a fixed Cassar 1:2.8 f=45mm lens http://www.leitzmuseum.org/CameraMakes/Diax/getldiax.html
  10. Strizic is recorded elsewhere as saying "It happened that the first Christmas we were married we went to Sydney and I saw tourists with cameras around their neck, so I thought I'd better have one too." (Camera and Clne June 1978)
  11. "It really was light – the harshness and strength of the Australian light – the light you don't have In Europe." (Camera and Clne June 1978)
  12. "...Australian opulence, bathed in incisive light." Mark Strizic, artist's statement, Melbourne Life exhibition, Lower Town Hall, Melbourne, July 1992 quoted in Matthews, Emma (2009) Mark Strizic Melbourne: Marvellous to Modern. Melbourne, Thames and Hudson ISBN 9780500500194
  13. STRIŽIĆ, Z. (1955). Svijetla i sjene. Jedna monografija Zagreba. [Photographs, with text in Serbocroatian, French, English and German. With a map.]. Pp. 222. Zagreb.
  14. Public Notice in The Age Tuesday 28 March 1961, p.20
  15. The Age, 15 May 1957 https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=BlURAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ppUDAAAAIBAJ&dq=strizic&pg=7124%2C2045150
  16. Terence Lane, 'Krimper, Schulim (1893–1971)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/krimper-schulim-10765/text19087, accessed 2 January 2013.
  17. Buckrich, Judith; Dunstan, Keith; Storey, Rohan; Strizic, Marc (2005). Collins: The Story of Australia's Premier Street. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing Pty, Limited. ISBN 9781740970570.
  18. "...there were many other professionals in the street, especially photographers – including, at some time or another, Helmut Newton, Jack Cato, Wolfgang Sievers and Mark Strizic." Michael Shmith quoted in the catalogue Van Wyck, S. (2006) The Paris End: Photography, Fashion and Glamour. Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, catalogue of the 2006 travelling exhibition first held at The Ian Potter: NGV Australia.
  19. Matthews, Emma and Strizic, Mark (2011) Melbourne: Marvellous to Modern. Thames & Hudson/State Library of Victoria
  20. Strizic, Mark, 'Little Protest' in 'Letters to the Editor, The Age Saturday 11 Jun 1960, p.2
  21. Neil Clerehan, 'Boyd, Robin Gerard Penleigh (1919–1971)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/boyd-robin-gerard-penleigh-9560/text16841, accessed 2 January 2013.
  22. see Annear, R. (2005) A City Lost & Found: Whelan the Wrecker's Melbourne. Melbourne:Black Inc ISBN 9781863953894
  23. National Gallery of Victoria Collection Stories (online) Melbourne: Seeing modern and contemporary Melbourne http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/collection/stories/melbourne/seeing-melbourne-now-and-then/seeing-modern-and-contemporary-melbourne%5B%5D
  24. News article: Australia’s 12 Best Books announced at the Australian Book Publishers’ Association Convention...includes ‘Melbourne: A Portrait" David Saunders and Mark Strizic (Georgian House). The Age. 25 April 1961 p.2
  25. Richard Troy, 'Portrait of a city: a Melbourne camera study,' The Age Saturday, Feb 4, 1961, p.19
  26. Mark Strizic: A Journey in Photography information National Portrait Gallery Travelling Exhibitions site http://www.portrait.gov.au/site/exhibition_subsite_strizic4.php
  27. "The essential ugliness has been glossed with beauty; and this is because Strizic's eye is instinctively selective. From an infinite range of possible shots it selects the ones in which the truth is armatured on a structure of formal beauty. His photographs are about ugliness. but as photographs they are not ugly. Strizic constructs vast and colourful murals [...] that are to be read as decorative abstracts. It comes as something of a shock to realise that these apparently non-figurative schemes are often evolved from a single figurative motif.". Review by James Gleeson, Sydney Morning Herald , 1 July 1973.
  28. Strizic discussed these processes in an address to "Still Photography?", "International Symposium on digital imaging, Melbourne, April 4, to April 8, 1994".
  29. Still photography? : the international symposium on the transition from analog to digital imaging, The Gallery, [1994], 1994, retrieved 8 April 2017
  30. Hammerstingl, Werner (2013). "Vale Mark Strizic". www.olinda.com. Retrieved 25 February 2020.
  31. Mark Strizic entry at Design and Art Australia Online (DAAO), a collaborative e-Research tool built upon the foundations of the Dictionary of Australian Artists Online http://www.daao.org.au/bio/mark-strizic/
  32. Jill Gray, 'In the know' column, The Age Friday 26 Jul 1974, p.21
  33. Pugh, Clifton. & Strizic, Mark. & Grimwade, Andrew Sheppard (1968). Involvement : the portraits of Clifton Pugh and Mark Strizic; The work. Melbourne : Sun Books
  34. Stuart Sayers, 'Writers and readers,' The Age Saturday 07 Sep 1968, p.10
  35. Patrick McCaughey, 'A flat abstractionist's victory,' The Age, Wednesday 29 May 1968, p.6
  36. "The idea of printing reproductions of paintings and photographs of the subject matter in juxtaposition is not new; usually (as in the case of Cezanne) it is done to show how the artist has manipulated nature. Here Strizic’s portraits appear in their right as products of a different discipline and everyone is apparently happy about their complementarity. Both painter and photographer are very articulate and they tell us about their reactions to the sitters; where one knows the subjects oneself one can say that their comments are extremely discerning – as one would expect." Clive Turnbull, 'A sumptuous Taj Mahal of a book,' The Age Saturday 08 Feb 1969, p.15
  37. Newton, Gael (19 December 2017). "In and out of focus". National Portrait Gallery of Australia. Retrieved 25 February 2020.
  38. S. J. Baker, 'Books for Christmas,' The Sydney Morning Herald, Thursday 01 Dec 1960, p.37
  39. Arnold Shore, 'Cameracraft,' The Age Tuesday 09 May 1961, p.7
  40. Listing, The AgeFriday, 08 Dec 1995, p.47
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