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Gerald and Margo Lewers, Sydney’s artistic dynasty, continues to flourish today

THE Lewers family is a true Australian art dynasty, as a new exhibition of their work will soon show.

DT Arts. Margo Lewers in her studio, late 1960s. For Elizabeth Fortescue Historical story. Supplied.
DT Arts. Margo Lewers in her studio, late 1960s. For Elizabeth Fortescue Historical story. Supplied.

ON August 6, 1962, Sydney sculptor Gerald Lewers was killed in a fall from his horse while mustering cattle on Chillagoe Station in Queensland. He was 56 years old. Back in Sydney, the tight-knit art world was shattered by the news.

Lewers was a celebrated artist and a popular, if quiet, figure. His vivacious wife Margo, three years younger, was a pioneering abstract painter and mosaicist.

The Lewers had lived since 1950 in a pretty house just steps from the Nepean River at Emu Plains, an area that was then a centre of cropping and market gardening in the lee of the Blue Mountains.

Energetic and enterprising, the Lewers had transformed the former pig farm into a family home, a working studio and a meeting place for Australia’s leading lights of literature and the arts.

Margo Lewers in the garden at her Emu Plains home.
Margo Lewers in the garden at her Emu Plains home.

Gerald’s sculptures peeped out from the beautiful gardens that the couple had designed and planted themselves. And inside the old farmhouse, Margo’s avant grade paintings splashed bright colour on all the walls. Tables groaned with art books and magazines, bringing fresh ideas from Europe and the US.

Sydney’s culturati regularly trooped out to Emu Plains for the stimulating conversation, the dishes for which Margo plundered her vegetable patch, and the wine that Gerald kept flowing.

Close friends included leading artists Frank and Margel Hinder, Lyndon Dadswell, Judy Cassab, Robert Klippel, Grace Crowley and Ralph Balson. Author Patrick White was also a visitor.

In the house at Emu Plains, White wrote, “ideas hurtled, argument flared, voices shouted, sparks flew”.

Gerald Lewers working on Reclining Figure, at Emu Plains, 1957.
Gerald Lewers working on Reclining Figure, at Emu Plains, 1957.

The couple’s daughters, Darani and Tanya, boarded at Frensham but spent much time at Emu Plains. Despite the atmosphere of free thinking, the girls still had boundaries to observe.

“When we had done our duties, we were allowed to go and swim in the Nepean River,” Darani Lewers recalls.

She remembers the night-time garden parties where lights strung in the trees created a magical dimension.

After Gerald’s death, a grieving Margo went on to complete a sculpture that her husband had been commissioned to make for the Reserve Bank in Canberra. She lived until 1978, evolving her art practice to include the use of colourful plexiglas in wall assemblages. She adored colour, and painted until just weeks before her death from lung cancer.

After Margo Lewer’s death in 1978, Darani Larsen turned her mother’s Emu Plains property and  substantial art collection over to the people of New South Wales.
After Margo Lewer’s death in 1978, Darani Larsen turned her mother’s Emu Plains property and substantial art collection over to the people of New South Wales.

Margo’s dearest wish was for her Emu Plains home to become a living gallery and studio for the people of Western Sydney. Her dream was realised when, after their mother’s death, Darani and Tanya gave the property and a substantial art collection to the people.

In launching the Penrith Regional Gallery and the Lewers Bequest in August 1981, NSW Premier Neville Wran said “Gerald and Margo Lewers’ contribution to Australian art was of signal importance. Their energies, and those of their contemporaries, set new directions for the visual arts in our country”.

Former NSW Governor Dame Marie Bashir will open the latest exhibition by the Lewers family on Wednesday night, at SPOT81 gallery in Chippendale.

Artists Darani Lewers (left) and husband Helge Larsen, with their children Pia Larsen (left rear) and Tor Larsen.
Artists Darani Lewers (left) and husband Helge Larsen, with their children Pia Larsen (left rear) and Tor Larsen.

Called Two Generations, the exhibition will showcase the contemporary jewellery of Darani Lewers and her husband Helge Larsen, and the artworks of their children Pia Larsen and Tor Larsen. Pia’s work emanates from a recent residency in New York. Tor’s work is a series of glass-fronted cabinets displaying found objects, machine parts and other items.

The Lewers’ art dynasty which has been so important to Sydney began with the arrival of Margo Lewers’ father, the German artist and writer Adolph Gustav von Plate in 1900. Margo’s brother Carl Plate was also an influential Sydney artist and a leader of the Modernist movement.

Darani Lewers was born in 1939, and in 1959 became a trainee to jeweller and silversmith Helge Larsen in Copenhagen. The couple married in Sydney in 1961 and became the multi award-winning duo Larsen & Lewers.

Darani’s sister Tanya Crothers is a well-known architect, printmaker and painter.

Margo remains central to the family story, with her questing nature and determination to introduce Australia to the “new world of ideas” she had discovered overseas in the 1930s while on honeymoon.

As a friend wrote to Tanya Crothers following Margo’s death: “To me she always was a sort of lighthouse, direct and bright, flashing with brilliance intermittently but continuously … She was a beacon of what could be done — with enough resolution and energy.”

Two Generations: Larsen & Lewers, Pia Larsen and Tor Larsen, April 13-24, SPOT81, 81 Abercrombie St, Chippendale.

Originally published as Gerald and Margo Lewers, Sydney’s artistic dynasty, continues to flourish today

Original URL: https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/today-in-history/gerald-and-margo-lewers-sydneys-artistic-dynasty-continues-to-flourish-today/news-story/ee45fa01ac0a427019add8b521a6352a