List of works Associated events accompanying the exhibition 1 Self Portrait with Press, mixed media, 1965 $4000 at Heysen Frames 2 Waterfront, watercolour, 1956 $4500 10 Finniss Street, North 3 Nude, charcoal, 1980 $1000 Artist Talk with Franz Kempf 4 Morning Coffee, Pont St. London, ink, 1956 $1000 2pm November 9 5 Street Market Rome, pen, 1956 $800 Performance and Conversation 6 Jewish Market, mixed media, 1960 $1500 Bach Cello Suite no 2 in D minor BWV 1008, 7 Night Flight, lithograph, 1957 $1000 performed by Janis Laurs 8 Mother, mixed media, 1963 $800 2pm November 16 9 Carrick Hill study for painting, pastel, 2003 $3000 Elder Conservatorium of Music Conversation with the Artist 10 Paris, ink and wash, 1986 $1500 2pm November 23 11 Ladies Day, pastel, 1990 $2500 Cultural Talks are free and will last 12 Nude, ink wash, 1996 $800 Celebration approximately 30 minutes 13 Nude, mixed media, 1996 $1000 14 Departure, lithograph, 1960 $600 Franz Kempf: Drawing for Music 15 Old Rabbi, ink and quill pen, 1995 $800 8 – 23 November 2008 Artworks can be purchased from 16 Morning Service, ink and quill pen, 1995 $800 11am – 4pm Monday – Sunday the exhibition venue or by calling Heysen Frames Robyn Green 8303 5786 17 Smoko, brush and ink, 1995 $1500 10 Finniss Street North Adelaide For more information please call 18 Performer, Cirque Du Soleil, mixed media, 2005 $1000 Art & Heritage Collections on This is an event of great importance for the Elder 8303 4031 or email 19 Reg Livermore, ink, 2004 $800 [email protected] Conservatorium and we are particularly excited 20 Performer, Cirque Du Soleil, mixed media, 2005 $500 to be working with Franz Kempf in bringing the 21 Show Girls, ink drawing and quill pen, 2007 $800 idea to fruition. 22 Show Time, brush drawing, 2008 $800 To have an artist of his stature offering such a public 23 Diane, mixed media, 2004 $1000 gesture of support is a wonderful affirmation of the Conservatorium and its work. 24 The Strapper, ink drawing, 1995 $800 We are extremely proud of the achievements of our 25 Frank ‘n’ Furter, ink and wash, 2003 $800 students, staff and graduates but there is much more 26 The Family, Bosnia, ink and wash, 1999 $800 that we would like to do to support them. We need to find 27 Study for painting, pastel, 2006 $2000 a way of matching our vision for them with the resources 28 The Search, mixed media, 1974 $1500 necessary to achieve it. 29 Figure in Studio, ink and sepia wash, 1990 $800 I hope that this exhibition will raise awareness of the need for such support and that Franz Kempf’s generosity 30 Old City Wall with Cypress, Israel, pastel, 1987 $4000 might inspire others to make their own investment in our 31 Studio Corner, ink and wash, 1989 $800 musical future. 32 The Walled Garden, gouache, 1983 $600 Professor David Lockett, Director Elder Conservatorium of Music 33 Sunset Coorong, watercolor, 2003 $3500

34 The Old Farm, ink, 1961 $800 This exhibition is proudly sponsored and supported by Barossa Valley Estate, Nick Heysen of Heysen Frames and Prices are inclusive of gst Art & Heritage Collections of the .

image Franz Kempf Sunset Coorong, 2003, detail A&H watercolour 52cm x 32cm A&H Passages This Celebration is inspired by artist Franz Kempf’s desire to support the arts in — in particular, the work of the University Drawing for Franz Kempf has been central across a lifetime of work. The exuberant and diverse character of of Adelaide’s Elder Conservatorium of Music. He donated all the artworks this selection of work (spanning a period of 1950s to the present) exemplifies comments made by art historian included in this exhibition. The University of Adelaide is deeply grateful and writer Sasha Grishin who has noted that Kempf ‘is an artist whose work presents both a striking continuity to Franz Kempf for his generosity and we invite you to join us and to throughout a career … and he is an artist whose work presents evidence for a constant rejuvenation and purchase an artwork in support of music in this state. invention.’ This inventive spirit is evident in the diversity of subjects in which the human figure dominates The Elder Conservatorium of Music, from its inception, has relied but is complemented by natural landscape and urban imagery. It is also evident in the manner of the artist’s on benefactors and donors to develop its programs and to enhance its graphic articulation, sometimes caressing forms into being with delicate washes and strokes or at other times services to students. The original benefactor was Sir Thomas Elder after slapping them down hard onto the surface with controlled aggression. His drawings are windows on a lifetime’s whom the institution is named. This exhibition is seeking contributions practice which has of its very nature evaded neat critical capture. Grishin for example has described Kempf as from all lovers of music and the visual arts. Those who purchase an an artist ‘who has worked outside the conventions and fashions which prevailed in the art world in Australia.’ artwork by Franz Kempf will not only nourish their enjoyment of the Art historian Robert Smith has commented that Kempf’s ‘intrinsic motivations give his art a depth and intensity art but will directly support music in the University and in the broader beyond fashionable externals.’ Kempf’s drawings are consciously fashioned within the orbit of the studio tradition community. This cross-artform support and the collaborative nature of in which drawing occupies a central place. The intimist character of many of his drawings and the highly this undertaking make it a special occasion for the University of Adelaide. personalized styles of delineation are echoes of drawing traditions which value mark-making as an expression of insight. From the Renaissance period to the modern era, among collectors and certainly between artists, From its origins in 1883 to the present day, the Elder Conservatorium drawings have been collected and exchanged as valued expressions of talent and temperament. As such, what of Music has led the way in the education and training of musicians. does this selection of drawings reveal about Kempf? Locally, it is a major contributor to the cultural life of Adelaide and South Australia, with strong links to professional and community First a word from the artist. He has commented that ‘A drawing for me is rarely a preliminary step to work in organisations. Nationally and internationally, graduates hold positions another medium. It is almost a compulsive act. Making marks on paper is a necessity. The act becomes an end of influence, working as performers, composers, scholars, educators, in itself.’ Applying this perspective to the drawings at hand goes a long way in explaining the mercurial shifts music technologists and administrators. Tradition and innovation play in subjects and particularly style of expression. The catholicity of his choice of subjects; village markets, old equal parts in the Conservatorium’s ethos, maintaining the best of our churches, streetscapes, vistas, gardens, portraits, workers, characters, performers and self portraiture is on one cultural heritage while embracing the new opportunities and challenges hand an expression of Kempf’s visual curiosity in the world around him and an appetite for travel in Europe and of the twenty-first century. Australia. But in terms of subject selection Smith has drawn attention to what he describes as a ‘cosmic quality’ in the artist’s work. This he sees as emanating from Kempf’s art as embedded in a translated European heritage within Australia and in Jewish tradition. This ‘duality’, Smith adds, ‘creates a sense of commitment, not just Franz Kempf AM is a significant Adelaide artist who has contributed to each of these cultures but to a broader view encompassing the tenacity and worth of human life. He looks to the visual arts through teaching, leadership roles in arts organisations, on existence as a chain with many links and his art moves back and forth through time and space, establishing writing on printmaking and most importantly through his art practice. a feeling for the potentially infinite.’ Of particular relevance to Kempf’s drawing practice is this cosmic quality Born in he studied at the National Gallery School with later given expression through a see-sawing of diverse and at times contradictory impulses, erotic, gross, abject, sojourns in Italy, Austria and England. He taught printmaking at the inspired, numinous, bleak, fragmented and compressed, active and passive. Kempf once commented that South Australian School of Art for over a decade. ‘I attempt to convey information about the human condition. At times this may be tranquil, expressive of His international recognition led him to exhibit widely with over 90 solo an inner harmony, and often it will be expressive of disquiet, reflecting disillusion with the human condition exhibitions and guest lecturing at key art schools in the United Kingdom. and its abject state.’ He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society UK and in 2002 was In responding to these elements, the viewer will be drawn into the symbolic orbit of Kempf’s art, in which appointed as a Member of the Order of Australia for his contribution to appearance is a window onto an inner world of distilled experience. This explains the allusive character of the the arts. He continues to exhibit regularly, nationally and internationally. artist’s approach to articulating his subjects. Heavy outlines threaten to bind and enclose then break suddenly His works are held in many collections both public and private. to release the eye from the central form, figures barely coalesce out of darkness or are conjured from a few These include Victoria and Albert Museum, UK; Guandong Museum springing marks. Landscapes are pinned to the paper by a few incisive marks or sweeps of the brush. There is of Art, China, key national galleries and many university art collections urgency about this manner of working as if the artist is capturing a dream image before it slips away. In this including the University of Adelaide. process, the niceties of considered illustration are swept aside and it is left to the reflexive, aesthetic compass to stabilise and focus the imagery. The connections with a broad genre of intimate figure drawing within urban/studio contexts particularly the fierce energy of Expressionist artists including Nolde, Grosz, Beckmann and Rohlfs is there to be discovered along with the louche shadows of Sickert’s twilight, lamp-lit worlds and the overheated sexuality of a charged Bonnard or Degas graphic image. Classical music performance has for Kempf been a lifetime passion. The sweep, dash, end points, darks and lights and tonal passages in the artist’s drawings have parallels in the world of music making in which form and sensation define central elements of self- containment that distinguishes and sustains the best of Kempf’s art. John Neylon

John Neylon is an independent writer and curator. He has written several books and numerous image Franz Kempf essays on South Australian artists and is the Sef Portrait with Etching Press, 1965, detail mixed media 45cm x 45cm inaugural art critic for The Adelaide Review.