Conversation
Bert FLUGELMAN
Austria/Australia 1923-2013
arrived Australia 1938
Conversation 2008
Stainless steel
Born in Vienna in 1923, Herbert (Bert) Flugelman came to Australia in 1938 with his family who were refugees from Nazism. After the War, Flugelman trained at the National Art School, Sydney before travelling to Europe where he held several exhibitions. He returned to Australia in 1955. In later years he held lecturing positions in South Australia and New South Wales until his retirement from teaching in 1990.
A turning point in his career came in 1967 when he won the Mildura Sculpture Prize. Subsequently, he was awarded a number of major public commissions – notably for works in central Sydney, at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra and in Adelaide’s Rundle Mall. Flugelman is best known for large- scale geometric abstractions fabricated in polished stainless steel.
Conversation exemplifies the artist’s mature style with its multiple triangulated forms whose gleaming surfaces reflect and visually dissolve the work’s immediate surroundings in a dynamic play of light and shade.