Artist of the Day, May 26, 2021: Margel Hinder, an Australian-American modernist sculptor (#1293)

 Margel Ina Harris Hinder, AM (1906-1995) was an Australian-American modernist sculptor, noted for her kinetic and public sculptural works.

Hinder was born Margel Ina Harris in New York. Her father worked in a steel foundry and later as a photographer in New York. She attended art schools in the United States: children's classes at the Albright Art School, Buffalo, New York; and the Boston Museum School, Boston.

Hinder's interest in cubist constructivist art was influenced by Eleonore Lange, a German-born artist who had arrived in 1930. Lange was one of a small number of artists who was interested in modernism in Sydney during the 1930s. It was Lange who organised Exhibition 1 in Sydney 1939, showcasing a ground-breaking group of artists, including Hinder, who shared an interest in semi-abstract painting and sculpture.

Hinder moved with her family to Canberra during the war years and Hinder started to explore the use of steel in her sculptures.

Post-war Hinder moved back to Sydney and was in a group exhibition at the David Jones Gallery, showing abstract art. The following year Hinder was back at the David Jones Gallery exhibiting glass and plastic carved shapes which emphasized theories of time and space'. In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald she talked about juggling her family life, teaching at a technical college and giving lectures at a Art Gallery of NSW. In the opinion of the art critic of the Sydney Morning Herald, sculpture was struggling to keep up with painting, referring to it as a 'neglected art', but they took time to carefully review works in the exhibition although only generally referring to Hinder's sandstone "Garden Sculpture". It was noted in a later article that this work was the first abstract sculpture acquired by the 'Art Gallery of New South Wales'. At the same time Hinder was the subject of a feature article in the Australian Women's Day and she was exploring rounded wire shapes that would be incorporated in her work in future decades.

In 1953 a sculpture of Hinder's was selected along with sculptures by Tom Bass and John Joseph Bruhn for an International sculptural competition on the theme of The Unknown Political Prisoner. Her work was based on hand movements and was to be installed in water, with the resulting reflections part of the design. Despite the comments of some critics, Hinder's work went on to win a prize of 275 pounds, announced at the Tate Gallery in London. She remarked to a journalist that she thought 'abstract artists have a hard time in Australia' and felt that their work was 'neither liked nor understood".

Hinder's work outside the Reserve Bank of Australia in Martin Place was commissioned after she won an international competition for sculptors in 1961. The abstract work created from cast copper with a steel core drew mixed responses to the form that people found difficult to identify. The first Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia Dr H. C. Coombs was resolute in his support of the selection of the work and even wrote a memorandum to staff with an explanation of the work However, it was a city that was at the same time somewhat polarised by Jørn Utzon's design for the Sydney Opera House. The same year she won the religious art Blake Prize for sculpture with her depiction of Christ on the Cross.

When the Monaro Mall was built in 1963 in the centre of the fast-expanding city of Canberra, Hinder was commissioned to create a large spherical mobile sculpture to be located in the middle of the Mall above the escalators. Revolving Sphere, 1963 consisted of a motorised spinning sphere that reflected light as it moved. The modernist Mall was the first air-conditioned and enclosed shopping centre in Australia.

Hinder's acknowledged master work is the water sculpture known as the Captain James Cook Memorial Fountain located in Newcastle, New South Wales's Civic Park. Completed in 1966, it was created with steel, copper and granite.

In 1969, Hinder's large aluminium abstract sculpture Sculptured Form was selected by the NCDC to be installed in the Woden Town Square. The sculpture had been chosen from the Comalco Invitation Award. Six sculptors were invited to create a 'free-standing work of sculpture which would stand in a public urban space to symbolise the growth and metamorphosis  of a typical natural Australian environment into complex development for urban use'.

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Ms. Margel Hinder

 Carey Prize Head, 1925

Seated Figure 1935-36

 Man with Jackhammer 1939

Garden Sculpture 1945

Abstracted Organic Carving 1946

Demoiselle Crane 1946

Abstracted 1949

Abstracted Wood Carving II, 1952

Abstracted Wood Carving 1952

Unknown Political Prisoner 1952

Suspended Dots 1953

Skyhook 1955

Revolving Construction 1957

Diatropic 1957-62

Growth Forms 1959

Wall Sculpture 1960

Captain James Cook Memorial Fountain 1961-66

Reserve Bank Sculpture 1962

Reserve Bank Sculpture 1962

Captain James Cook Memorial Fountain 1966

Sawtooth 1967

Six Day War I 1967

Marland House Competition model
(Adelaide Telecommunications Commission) 1971

Sculpture Form 1972

Green Garden Sculpture Model 1972

Green Garden Sculpture Model 1972

Planar III 1973

Interlock 1973-79

 Northpoint Fountain 1975

 Northpoint Fountain 1975

Monoliths 1977

Untitled, Bronze, 1979

Denis Winston Fountain 1981

Model for Box Construction 1982

Tri-form III 1983

Tri-form model 1983