Margel Hinder AM (1906-1995), sculptor, was a native of the USA who trained in Buffalo and Boston in the 1920s. In the early 1930s she married Australian Frank Hinder, who had gone to America to study art. In 1934 they came to Australia, where he joined ‘second-wave modern’ artists including Ralph Balson, Grace Crowley and Rah Fizelle in introducing cubist, abstract and futurist art to Sydney. During the war the couple lived in Canberra, working in the Department of Home Security. Until the 1940s Margel mostly worked in wood, but after the war, her metal constructions became central to the new sculpture movement. In 1953 she was one of several artists who won substantial runner-up prizes in the ‘Unknown Political Prisoner’ competition in London. Wire revolving sculptures that she made in the 1950s evolved into a work for Canberra’s pioneering Monaro Mall in 1963. Her Free Standing Sculpture (1964) clings to the external wall of the Reserve Bank in Martin Place, Sydney; the Captain James Cook Memorial Fountain (1966) in copper, granite and bronze is in Newcastle’s Civic Park; the Sculptured Form (1972) is in Woden Town Square, Canberra.
Margel (pronounced Mar-jel) is pictured at home in Turner with the couple’s cat Tarquin, who often ravaged the stockings of visitors.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased with funds provided by the Ross family in memory of Noel and Enid Eliot 2014
© Enid Hawkins (nee Hinder)
A portrait of the sculptor Margel Hinder and her cat Tarquin, by Frank Hinder, created in 1945. Pen, ink and pencil on off-white paper, mounted and framed in wood. The image measures 28 cm in height and 25 cm wide.
Margel and Tarquin are depicted with minimal flowing lines of black ink. The brush marks are a contrast between sweeping dynamic bold wet lines and more textured dry strokes. Her full-length figure is shown seated at an angle, left arm turned toward us as she sits cross-legged in an armchair.
Margel’s hair is concealed by a cap or headwrap with a curled fringe poking out and covering her forehead. Her face is tilted away from us, her gaze is downcast, focusing on a book in her lap. Loose lines of ink detail glasses, disguising her eyes. She has a strong pointed nose and full mouth. She sits at ease, her left arm propped on the armchair with her chin nestled in her left hand, her thumb reaching up to caress her cheek.
Her body is draped in a loose garment with an open cardigan that flows down over her crossed legs, right knee resting over the left. She wears narrow fitted trousers, and her feet are covered in flat shoes.
A line angles across the lower third of the page, indicating a floor and a corner of a room with no other details of the space. Tarquin, her cat, sits at her feet. Its front legs are extended with its head curled up into its stomach, actively grooming.
The artist Frank Hinder has written Margel + Tarquin, Canberra, in the lower right corner in pencil in cursive letters.
Written and voiced by Alana Sivell, 2021
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