Title

Sellbach, Udo.

Author

Australian Prints.

Source

[Not applicable]

Publication date

2010

Type

Biography

Language

English

Country of context

Australia

Full text

Udo Sellbach

Udo Sellbach was born in Cologne, Germany in 1927. He grew up during the oppressive period of the Nazi regime and continued to live in Cologne through the war years, watching the city almost completely destroyed. After the war, as West Germany became less culturally oppressed than it had been under Nazism, Sellbach had his first experience of modern art and he went on to study at the Kulner Werkschulen in Cologne from 1947 to 1953.

Sellbach arrived in Australia in 1955 and since that time he has held many prestigious teaching positions and has made a considerable contribution to art education and printmaking in Australia. He began as the junior art master at the St Peters College in Adelaide and went on to become the founding Lecturer of Printmaking at the Adelaide School of Art. In 1965 he moved to Melbourne where he lectured at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology until 1977. During this time he also co-founded the Print Council of Australia. Following this he was appointed Head of the Tasmanian School of Art, a position he held from 1972 to 1978. He then became founding director of the Canberra School of Art — a school based on the European model of a studio-based curriculum — where he remained until 1985. The work Sellbach has produced in Australia is both serious and powerful. An exploration of the human condition, it explores moral and ethical issues.

© Australianprints