‘I work directly to find unity in many different ways. My works are in series of families in worlds for themselves alone.’
— April Glaser-Hinder
The niece of celebrated artists Frank and Margel Hinder, April Glaser-Hinder was born in Sydney in 1928. At the age of sixteen, she left school to study violin and singing at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. It was not until 1967, when Glaser-Hinder, just shy of her fortieth birthday, began her art studies at Randwick Technical College. From there she pursued a Diploma in Sculpture at the East Sydney Technical College (now the National Art School). Many of her teachers were practising artists themselves, including Ron Robertson-Swann – who had recently returned from London – Bert Flugelman and Peter Powditch.
In 1970, Glaser-Hinder enrolled in evening classes at Ultimo Technical College, becoming the first female to attend their Automotive Workshop, taking classes in metalwork, panel beating, welding and spray painting. Many of the other students had been attending for several years and were vintage-car owners making parts for their own vehicles. An important year in her oeuvre, 1970 was also the year she produced her first steel sculpture, Yellow, now held at Wagga Wagga Art Gallery.
In 1975, Glaser-Hinder received her Diploma of Education and was appointed art teacher for the Department of Education. The same year, while still attending night school, she commenced her Steel Ribbon sculpture series. In these works, she investigated imagined space through single planes of ribboned steel that appear to float, hanging in the air and defying the inherent rigidity of the material from which they are forged.
Hovering, 1975, and Untitled, 1975–77, were both included in Glaser-Hinder’s major exhibition of her Steel Ribbon series, held at Gallery A in Sydney in 1977. Hovering conveys the illusion of weightlessness: its graceful, elongated edge appears to float delicately above the bottom edge of the ribboned plane. With Untitled, the tapering end of the steel band folds over itself, nestling against the bottom edge, creating a space within the fluid contour – a dynamic interplay of form and emptiness.
Hovering and Untitled have been generously gifted to the NGV Collection by Clio Curtis, in memory of her father, Harry Nicolson, who passed away in 2021. Nicolson, the former Deputy Head of both External and General Studies at East Sydney Technical College, was a dear friend and teacher of Glaser-Hinder.
Following her Gallery A exhibition, Glaser-Hinder and her Swiss husband moved to Switzerland, where she lived and worked for four decades. Due to this significant time abroad, her practice is better recognised overseas, with her works represented in institutions in Switzerland and Germany. In 1998, she won first prize at the 13th Biennale Internazionale Daniesca in Ravenna, Italy.
Following her husband’s death, Glaser-Hinder returned to Australia in 2006. In 2022, Wagga Wagga Art Gallery held a major Glaser-Hinder retrospective exhibition, One Does Nothing Alone, which explored key moments in the artist’s fifty-year career across Australia and Europe.
Beckett Rozentals is NGV Curator, Australian Art.
The NGV warmly thanks Clio Curtis for gifting these works to the Collection in memory of Harry Nicolson.
This article first appeared in the July–August 2024 edition of NGV Magazine.