Erwin Fabian was one of Australia's most highly regarded sculptors and graphic artists and is widely represented in public art collections in Australia and Europe. When he died on January 19, 2020, aged 104, it was felt that Australia has lost on of its great art elders. Born in Berlin in 1915 into an artistic milieu where both parents were artists, the early death of his father and the rise of Hitler saw Fabian, as a German Jewish adolescent, lose the opportunity to gain a proper academic art training in Germany.
By 1938, Fabian had lost his homeland as he fled to take refuge in England; by 1940 he had lost his freedom as the English authoroties had him interned as an 'enemy alien'. In the same year, he was banished from Europe on the notorious HMT Dunera to Australia, where he was placed in internment camps in Hay, Orange and Tatura. Freed in 1942 on enlisting in the Australian army, Fabian remained in uniform until he was demobbed in 1946 and that year became a naturalised Australian.
Like many of the Dunera Boys, Fabian returned to England where he married an Australian girl with whom he had two children. In 1962, Fabian returned with his family to Australia, where he turned to making sculptures that he assembled out of discarded bits of scrap metal and wood that he found in the bush. His career as an artist took root in Australia and he remained based in Melbourne but made frequent, usually annual trips to Europe where he had a studio in London and later was celebrated in exhibitions in both London and Berlin.
Fabian was friends with the author since 1980 and his first major monograph on his art is based on many years of taped interviews, discussions with the artist as well as extensive research.
