Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack
1893–1965 · German-born Australian artist, a pioneer of colour-light plays at the Bauhaus
Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack (1893-1965) was a German-born artist who became Australian. He trained in Frankfurt and Munich before studying at the Bauhaus from 1919 to 1924. His best-known contribution is the Farbenlichtspiele, or colour-light plays: moving projections of coloured light, produced through mechanically operated geometric stencils and accompanied by music he composed himself. They are now seen as an early form of multimedia.
After the Bauhaus closed in 1925, he taught in several German schools until the Nazi regime removed him from teaching because of his partly Jewish ancestry. In 1936 he emigrated to Britain, where he worked on the Brynmawr Experiment in Wales. In 1940 he was deported to Australia as an enemy alien and held in internment camps, where he made sober woodcuts and relief prints. He later taught art at Geelong Grammar School, where pupils remembered him as an inspiring teacher. In 1963 he was invited to reconstruct his light plays at the Bauhaus Archiv in Darmstadt.