Frank Weitzel

Frank Weitzel (22 November 190522 February 1932) was a linocut printmaker and sculptor from New Zealand, who studied in San Francisco and Munich before moving to Sydney and then London. A promising artist, he died of tetanus on the cusp of his first solo show at the age of 26.

Early life and education Weitzel was born in Levin on 22 November 1905 to naturalised German parents Maria Benninghoven and her husband Frederick Gustav Weitzel, a brass founder; his older sister was the teacher and Communist Hedwig Weitzel. By 1912 the family were living in Wellington, where Weitzel grew up. They were also socialists and political radicals: the family home on Buller Street was a meeting place for anti-militarists and communists. During World War One their German name and their anti-conscription sympathies led to the family being viewed with suspicion, and Weitzel's father was interned on Matui / Somes Island as an enemy alien, despite being a naturalised New Zealand citizen since 1902. After his father's death, Weitzel's mother took in boarders and became increasingly angry at the New Zealand authorities; she applied unsuccessfully to be repatriated to Germany, and in 1921 moved to San Francisco with Frank (was 16 and had just begun attending art classes) and another of her children.

Weitzel enrolled in high school, and in 1923 won a three-year scholarship to attend the California School of Fine Arts. He studied sculpture under Bert Mangard, textile design, and drawing (winning first and second prizes for all three), and was influenced by Pre-Columbian sculpture. After travelling in Europe in 1928 he moved to Sydney that same year to join his family, who had relocated there.

Artistic career

Wietzel began practising linocut at this time. He became a part of Sydney's art circle, creating monochrome linocuts of Sydney streets and building sites, more abstract than literal. One example is Sydney Bridge (c. 1929) which depicted the geometry of construction girders used in the building of Sydney Harbour Bridge. Weitzel's work brought him to the attention of the modernist artists Adrien Feint and Thea Proctor, who invited him to join the Contemporary Group, and one of his works and a short biography appeared in Art in Australia in September 1929. He worked from a studio over a butcher shop on Circular Quay, making prints and creating bookends, wall hangings, linocut batik shawls, and lampshades. He was also a violinist, playing in the Sydney Conservatorium Orchestra.

A lack of recognition from the Australian public, and the controversy from his sister Hettie's Communist politics, induced Weitzel to move to London. Weitzel set up a sculpture studio in Hilton, and wrote to the journalist Colin Simpson in Australia: "Now I am working on a show of my own which is being arranged for me by some terrific money bags". The Garnetts arranged for him to be buried in the Hilton village churchyard. There are now significant collections of Weitzel's linocuts and other works in the National Gallery of Australia and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, but in New Zealand collections he is mostly represented by works gifted to public galleries by Rex Nan Kivell, a New Zealander and director of the Redfern Gallery.