Tina Haim-Wentscher


Tina Haim-Wentscher also: Tina Haim-Wentcher was a German-Australian sculptress.

Life

Tina Haim-Wentscher was born in 1887 in Constantinople as a daughter of the originating from Serbia coming merchant David Leon Haim and his Italian wife Rebecca Mondolfo. The family belonged to the Turkish-Sephardi Jews. The family came to Vienna and 1893 to Berlin, where Tina Haim in 1907/08 studied sculpture at a private art school, the Lewin-Funcke-School in Charlottenburg and then ran her own studio. From 1912 to 1914 she stayed several times for studies in Paris, where her works attracted the interest of the sculptor Auguste Rodin. With a bust of her sister, her first work, she participated in an exhibition of the Berlin Secession. A long-standing friendship linked her to the sculptress Käthe Kollwitz.
In 1914 she married the Berlin painter . From 1921 the couple undertook study trips to Greece, Italy, Egypt and a longer trip to Bali and Java in 1931/32. From 1927 to 1931 she was a member of the Association of Berlin artists. In 1933, they decided on the advice of Käthe Kollwitz, not to return to Germany because of the deteriorating situation for Jews. They stayed in China and again Indonesia and in the countries of Indochina, about 1935/36 in Siam and Cambodia, 1936-37 in Singapore and 1936/40 in Malaysia.
With the outbreak of World War II, the couple was deported in 1940 as "Enemy Aliens" to Australia, where they were interned until 1942 in Tatura, Victoria. After her release, they settled in Melbourne, received Australian citizenship in 1946 and anglicized their name to "Wentcher". Tina Haim-Wentcher joined the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors, and in 1958 she was awarded the "Interstate Sculptors Prize" of Newcastle, New South Wales. Her charitable work for the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne led to a close friendship with the philanthropist Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, the mother of media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Tina Haim-Wentcher died in 1974 in her 87th year of life in Melbourne.

Work

The art patron Henri James Simon gave the Egyptian Museum of Berlin in 1920, among of other pieces, the bust of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti, the most famous exhibit of his collection. Simon had financed the excavations of Ludwig Borchardt in the Egyptian Amarna and brought the artifacts to Germany. Heinrich Schäfer, director of the Egyptian Museum, greatly appreciated the works of Tina Haim. He commissioned the artist in 1913, to make a detailed copy of the bust. She made two copies in artificial stone for Wilhelm II, German Emperor and James Simon. In the early 1920s made Haim-Wentscher once again a model bust, an exact manually made presumptuous model. This model was used for many years for molding all subsequent art replicas.
Tina Haim-Wentscher together with her husband designed the artistic decoration of the Malaysian pavilion for the Empire Exhibition, Scotland 1938 in Glasgow. The decorations were made in form of ten dioramas with life-size stone figures in front of landscapes.
Sculptures by her are in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, in the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney and in the McClelland Gallery and Sculpture Park, Langwarrin, Victoria.

Works (selection)