Hertha Kluge-Pott

Hertha Kluge-Pott (16 December 1934 – 9 June 2025) was a German-born Australian printmaker based in Melbourne.

Early life and education Hertha Kluge-Pott was born in Berlin on 16 December 1934, into an upper-middle-class German family and studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste and Braunschweig from 1953 to 1958, where she knew Günter Grass, who was studying graphics and was the student representative.

Australia Against her family's wishes Kluge-Pott migrated from Hamburg to Australia in 1958, aged 23, having graduated and after the death of her father. The ship on which she was traveling, the Skaubryn, caught fire on 1 April 1958, three days out of Colombo on the way to Perth, and passengers evacuated in life boats, watching as it burned, and in her case, with all her possessions. A cargo ship transferred them to another before their arrival on a Dutch vessel, which sank some time later. Recounting the adventure in a 1988 interview, Kluge-Pott recalled; "I arrived in Australia in a trance. I was 23, I had no money and no belongings. It took me a long time to find my identity in Australia."

Style Of Australia Kluge-Pott has said: "I think there is no other country like this. Words are too flat to describe it. It is frightening, threatening, beautiful [ ... ] I have been here for 30 years, and I know the work I do could not have been done anywhere else in the world but Terra Australis."

Reception Writing in 1997 of Kluge-Pott's second solo exhibition at Australian Galleries in Melbourne, Jenny Zimmer writes; Awesome is the word that best describes Hertha Kluge-Pott's recent etchings. Dark, brooding and passionate as ever, they echo oceanic moods and reverberate with the sparse coastal vegetation's harsh struggle with the elements around Cape Bridgewater and west into South Australia's sandy wind-swept Coorong. The artist, a born naturalist, enjoys a symbiotic relationship with sea and coast a union begun dramatically 40 years ago when the ship Skaubryn, on which she set out for Australia, went down in the Bay of Bengal. The prints, etchings and dry points are made with traditional methods learnt at the Berlin Academy. They can be read in numerous ways. Pages of a Survey is a series of eight small drypoints scratched directly on to the plates, probably while on field excursions. Recorded are tangled ti trees and other coastal plants grown dense and gnarled for protection against the ravages of nature. She interprets them as growing inward into complicated bundles of matter, their sturdy outline shapes darkened by detail that grows thicker and richer at each epicentre. Then she extracts a leaf, a pod, a flower or some other distinctive element and, placing it to one side, renders it precisely as if studied under a looking glass. Robert Nelson, though recognising her skilfulness, less understands what is relayed;Imagery of Hertha Kluge-Pott is promising, teeming with vibrant life-forms and detail. Yet ... the earnest decoction of nature in mannered arrangements doesn't succeed in communicating much about the subject matter.

Career After traveling during 1964–65 to Spain, Italy and Germany, Kluge-Pott continued a career in printmaking, as well as teaching the medium. She established a printmaking workshop at the Melbourne State College in printmaking and drawing 1968–78, with breaks to practice and study overseas at Hamburg Academy of Art and to travel in Italy and the United Kingdom 1974–75, and then lectured at RMIT 1979–92, where in 1985 she was made senior lecturer. She returned to RMIT to teach part-time 1993-4 and in 1995 at the Victorian College of the Arts, also part-time.

She held seven solo exhibitions 1972–90 in Melbourne including at Stuart Gerstman and Powell St galleries, in Brisbane, Canberra and Geelong.

She was the 1996 Judge for the Silk Cut Acquisitive Award, Melbourne, and in 2003 was appointed patron at the establishment of Portland Bay Press print workshop & studio.

Illness and death After suffering declining vision for some time, she moved into Rathdowne Place aged care facility in Carlton, Melbourne, where she died after a short illness on 6 June 2025, at the age of 90.

Awards 1966: F.E. Richardson Print Prize, Geelong Gallery 1999 Australian Paper Art Award, Melbourne

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions have included: 1972 Vic Langsam Galleries Melbourne 1978 Susan Gillespie Gallery, Canberra 1981 Studio One Print Workshop & Gallery, Brisbane 1982 Stuart Gerstman Gallery, Melbourne 1985 Works Gallery, Geelong, VIC 1987 Powell Street Graphics Gallery, Melbourne 1990 Powell Street Graphics Gallery, Melbourne 1993 Grahame Galleries + Editions, Brisbane 1994 Australian Galleries, Melbourne 1997 Australian Galleries, Melbourne 2001 Australian Galleries Works on Paper, Sydney 2005 Grahame Galleries + Editions, Brisbane 2005 Australian Galleries Works on Paper, Melbourne 2010 ‘Recent work’, Australian Galleries, Melbourne 2015 Australian Galleries, Derby Street, Melbourne 2018 ‘Recent work’, Australian Galleries, Melbourne

Collections National Gallery of Australia Art Gallery of New South Wales Art Gallery of South Australia National Gallery of Victoria Queensland Art Gallery Geelong Gallery Newcastle Regional Art Gallery BHP corporate collection Ostrow City Museum, Poland Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane Queensland State Library - James Hardy Collection, Brisbane Hamilton Art Gallery, Hamilton, VIC Ipswich City Art Gallery, Ipswich, NSW Mornington Peninsula Art Centre, Mornington, VIC Riddoch Art Gallery, Adelaide University of Western Sydney, Macarthur Collection, NSW Wagga Wagga City Art Gallery, Wagga Wagga, NSW Warrnambool Art Gallery, Warrnambool, VIC University of Melbourne, Melbourne Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery, NSW City Art Gallery, Newcastle, NSW City of Banyule, Melbourne Australian Paper Corporate Art Collection, Australia Artbank, Sydney Centre for the Artist Book Collection, Grahame Galleries & Editions, Brisbane City of Whitehorse, Melbourne Deakin University, Melbourne Education Department of Victoria, Melbourne Geelong Grammar School Yarra Valley School Gallery Methodist Ladies College, Melbourne Lodz, Poland: Male Formy Grafici Print Council of Australia, Melbourne Monash University Collection, Melbourne Australian Embassy, Singapore Department of Foreign Affairs, Canberra