Material studies and professional practice: European émigré sculptors at RMIT

Abstract

Of all the departments in RMIT’s School of Art, post-WW2 European émigré teachers arguably made the greatest impact in sculpture. Teisutis Zikaras, Vincas Jomantas and Hermann Hohaus comprised over half of the full-time teaching staff in the sculpture department for three decades, from 1956 to 1987, while Inge King served as an external examiner in the 1960s before joining as sessional staff from 1975 to 1987. Between them they had studied in the academies and art schools of Kaunas, Vilnius, Berlin, Munich, London and Glasgow and inherited a centuries-old discourse of sculpture as a proxy for the human figure. However, each moved beyond their academic training and developed a range of views ..