Andersch, Joerg Anton Holzner & Ian Munday The Mercury p10 18 February, 2006

Anton Holzner & Ian Munday
Colville Street Gallery, Battery Point
Price range: $550 to $12,000

Painter Anton Holzner and sculptor Ian Munday are a formidable team at the Colville Street Gallery.

Holzner is a major coup for the gallery, since he ranks among the top artists in Australia . He is not a frequent exhibitor, and an almost reclusive living pattern keeps him out of the usual haunts where celebrated artists circulate. When Holzner came to Tasmania in the early 70s, he made an immediate impact while teaching at the Tasmanian School of Art. His influence on the emerging young painters of the day was great. Many of them have gone on to become well-known painters, attesting to his valuable legacy.

Ian Munday I am less familiar with. His work certainly crops up every now and then, and in this exhibition he is showing a series of small shadow boxes, beautifully worked to feature finishes that belie their wooden construction.

In a brilliant way Munday has managed to simulate several metal finishes on the sculptures, which are sets of organic shapes, assembled in intricate layers. Some of the 30cm x 65cm boxes are faintly reminiscent of antique Indian carved ivory sphere-within-sphere – each layer is a beautiful scene, yet independent of the next layer. Munday's work makes a nice contrast to the large and powerful canvases of Holzner, and this is an event not to be missed.

Companion to Tasmanian History, University of Tasmania, 2005

Anton Holzner (b 1935), artist. His concern is the articulation of paint on canvas to create an imaginary spatial reality beyond the visible and material world we occupy. Vigorous painterliness and tonal use of colour contribute to his work's overall gravity. Holzner is part of a movement of mid-twentieth century abstract painting in Europe, which first began to be felt in Australia in the 1950s and 1960s. Born in Austria, he studied theatre design before emigrating to Australia and settling in Adelaide. He moved to Hobart in 1971. His first major exhibition was at John Reed's Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne in 1963. More recently, surveys of his work were staged at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart 1988 and the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston 1997.

Further reading: H Kolenberg, 'Three painters in Tasmania ', Art in Australia 22/4, 1985; and Holzner paintings, Hobart, 1988; S Backhouse, Holzner paintings 1988–1997, Launceston, 1997.