Unveiling an icon’s history
When it was time to pack up sixty years’ worth of memorabilia at Majellan House earlier this year, several items were treated with extra care, amongst them a carving of Saint Gerard Majella.
After the Redemptorist community moved to Brighton in 1964, they commissioned a renowned Austro-Australian artist to create an icon of St Gerard. The final work was installed in the chapel in time for St Gerard’s feast in October 1965 where it remained until the house was vacated in April.
So, what of the icon’s origins?
In the aftermath of World War II, thousands of displaced persons from Europe sought a new home in Australia. The young sculptor Leopoldine Mimovich, also known as Poldi, was one of those immigrants.
Poldi was born the second of five children on June 25, 1920, in Neumarkt in the Italian Tyrol. Her father, Franz Deflorian, was an interior decorator. Two years after her birth, the family moved to the small village of St Johann in Austria. At an early age, Poldi’s talents were recognised by the local school master, who encouraged her to consider art school.
The family was not wealthy, so aged fourteen, Poldi left school and worked with her father who taught her gilding, signwriting and stencil work.
Poldi met her first husband, Othmar Vockner, a professional soldier, when she was sixteen. At the outbreak of World War 2, he was sent to the front in Poland, Greece and finally Russia where he died in February 1941. Poldi continued to work with her father until 1940 when she moved to Vienna. There she enrolled at art school under the Austrian Professor Gusty Mundt Amman who taught her the technical aspects of clay modelling and drawing.
In 1943, Mundt-Amman arranged a place for Poldi at the college of Religious Art in Hallstadt studying under Professor Rothboeck. A year later the school was closed by the Nazis and Poldi was conscripted to work for the Germans as an accountant in a munitions factory. She met Viennese sculptor Professor Herman Musger, also assigned to the factory, whose influence and night-time drawing lessons proved invaluable to the young artist.
After the war she resumed her studies in Hallstadt, graduating as a qualified teacher with a Diploma of Art. In 1948, she married Ljubisa Mimovich, a stateless Serbian officer who had been a prisoner of the Gestapo.
The following year they set sail for Australia as displaced persons and began a new life at Bonegilla and Royal Park Migrant Hostels. Later, they moved to the Melbourne suburb of Kew, where Poldi established her studio. Like many European immigrants in those post-war years and regardless of their qualifications, the Mimovichs were given identity cards and had to work for two years in menial employment.
Poldi worked at a shirt factory where her sympathetic employer, after seeing her drawings, released her early so she could pursue a sculpting career. She worked as a carver for Myer, and on private commissions. Although Poldi experienced serious setbacks through illness, she began to be recognised for her carving, moulding and painting.
Poldi’s pieces today can be found in parks, homes, churches, schools and convents around Australia. Her crucifixes grace the walls of the Mawson Inter Denominational chapel in the Antarctic and the United Nations building in New York. Other works are in England, the United States, Germany, Japan, Korea, Honolulu and New Guinea. Her small crucifixes, Madonnas and images of the saints are also in many Australian homes.
Sister Jill O’Brien SGS, a member of the National Liturgical Architecture and Art Council, said Poldi had established her place as an accomplished sculptor whose work reflected her Austrian origins and Catholic background. “She built on an early twentieth century European tradition and over time developed a more stylised and modern body of work.”
Poldi received numerous awards, including the Order of Australia Medal for services to sculpture and the certificate of Merit for Distinguished Achievement from the World Who’s Who.
Poldi died on Christmas morning in 2019, aged ninety-nine.
The icon of St Gerard is currently located at St Clement’s retreat centre in Galong, NSW.
The 300th anniversary of St Gerard’s birth will be celebrated in 2026. More stories about St Gerard will follow in the next few issues.
Feature Image: The carving of Saint Gerard Majella.
Image: Leopoldine ‘Poldi’ Mimovich. Photo: Fiona Basile.
Image: The ‘Boy with Rabbit’ at Alexandra Gardens in Kew was another of Poldi’s works.
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