A Czech-born surrealist, Dusan Marek fled to Australia with his brother Voitre on political grounds, after the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia. A 'self-proclaimed surrealist at the age of thirteen, Marek carried that talisman until his death at the age of 67 in 1993' (Mould, p.15).
Born on the 7 March 1926 in Bitouchov, Northern Bohemia (in what was then Czechoslovakia), Marek lived in Prague, Czech Republic, between around 1943 and 1948: imagery from this area recurs in his earliest films in Australia, such as Fisherman's Holiday (1952). In 1948, Marek and his brother Voitre left Czechoslovakia on political grounds and spent March to July 1948 in a refugee camp in Dillenberg, Germany, where Marek produced what were widely thought to be his earliest paintings, 'The Voyage' and 'The Birth of Love', which he painted on the wooden slats of his bed. (See Stephen Mould for details on Marek's pre-1948 works.)
Marek and his brother travelled to Australia in mid-July 1948 on the SS Charleton Sovereign; delays on the journey meant that the ship did not dock in Sydney until 29 October 1948. From here, the Marek brothers moved to the Immigration and Training Centre at Bathurst, New South Wales, where Voitre was reunited with his fiancee, who had travelled to Australia on a separate boat, and Marek met his future wife, Helena.
According to Stephen Mould, the Mareks chose to settle in Adelaide after it was enthusiastically recommended to them by an administrator in the Bathurst camp: 'Dusan was on a contract to work for the South Australian Government for two years, and took a job with SA Railways. After a few weeks, both brothers found themselves able to negotiate with their skills as jewellers, and found employment with Sheppard's Jewellers in Adelaide' (p.5).
Both brothers also began exhibiting as artists while living in Adelaide, but their introduction to the South Australian art community was not a salubrious one; in a 1949 exhibition by the Adelaide branch of the Contemporary Art Society, for example, two of Marek's works were declared obscene, and either 'banned at the selection stage and later displayed, or ... completely withdrawn' (Mould, p.6). Mould attributes this to a conservative swing in the Adelaide art world, prompted by such recent events as the Ern Malley affair and the 1944 William Dobell trial (p.6), but the end result was that Dusan Marek left Adelaide in 1951, settled in Hobart, Tasmania, for some six months, and then moved on to Sydney.
In Sydney, Marek earned a living through jewellery making (Mould, p.8), but also began his experiments with films, beginning with the short films Fisherman's Holiday and Light of the Darkness (both 1952), both of them surreal, animated films using stop-motion animation and plasticine figurines.
Marek remained in Sydney for three years before moving to Papua New Guinea: first Port Moresby (for some six months), then Rabaul, in New Britain. As Stephen Mould notes, 'this period marks a significant fallow period in comparison to the constant need to work and create that marks the rest of his adult life' (p.10). He did produce the short film Nightmare (1956): the short animated film Spaceman Number One, also produced in 1956, was actually filmed during a brief return to Adelaide. However, Marek also produced documentary films during this period: the actual number is unclear, but the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) does contain a print of a documentary called Mountain Festival in Britain, showing the preparations for and participation in the 'mountain festival'.
In 1959, Marek returned to Adelaide, where he became caretaker at the Kym Bonython Gallery. His film production increased in this period. Among his works in this period are the series of short animated films (using the stop-motion and paper cut-out technique he had first used for Spaceman Number One) based on nursery rhymes (sometimes loosely grouped together in bibliographies under the umbrella title Nursery Rhymes), as well as the short, fantastic films The Bachelor's Lament (1959), King Arthur (1959), One Dotty Adventure (1961), Ship A Sailin' (c.1960), and Adam and Eve (1962). The last of these films, Adam and Eve, won the Grand Prix (Gold Medal) at the Australian Film Awards in 1963, and Stephen Mould also notes that Marek's films won 'international awards at festivals in Vancouver, Venice and Chicago' (p.11), though he does not specify which awards or festivals.
Marek's increasing focus on films drew the attention of Fontana Films, 'a Sydney-based company which employed a number of Czech émigrés. Marek was provided with a studio and a salary. Apart from a fairly light workload making some TV commercials and animations, he was free to continue his creative work using the resources of the Fontana Studio.' (Mould, p.11). The NFSA holds an advertising showreel of Marek's advertisements from this period, made using the paper cut-out, stop-motion animation with which he had been working since the late 1950s, including advertisements for Speedie Electric Jugs, Lucky Strike Cigarettes, NWS Channel 9, The Savings Bank of S.A., and Life Savers.
During this period, Marek collaborated with Tim Burstall on the animated film The Magic Trumpet (1965). The studio available to him also allowed Marek to make his first full-length film, Cobweb on a Parachute (1967) which Stephen Mould asserts
would, if it had been completed, hold a claim to being Marek's magnum opus. Unfortunately, a dispute between Marek and his employers broke out about the ownership of the film. The uncut negative was seized by Fontana, and all that remains today is a black and white work print, lacking the dissolves and superimpositions that Marek had planned. (p.11)
This marked Marek's break with Fontana Films, though he remained in Sydney until 1968, before returning to Adelaide. In Adelaide, he made another full-length film, the surrealist science-fiction film And the Word Was Made Flesh (1971), which Mould notes was made in collaboration with students from Flinders University (p.13). Marek had previously collaborated with students in Adelaide in 1963, when he used schoolchildren's drawings as the basis for his short film Windmills; he would collaborate with students again in Glide if You Can (1975), made with students from the Tasmanian School of Art (Marek had moved to Tasmania in 1973, and remained there until 1977).
Glide if You Can was Marek's last film, though he continued to paint, and also to lecture (in both film and painting), which he did first in Hobart (at the University of Hobart) and then in Canberra (where he was awarded a Fellowship in Creative Arts at the Australian National University in 1977). After a period touring Europe and the United States in 1979 and 1980 and a brief return to Hobart in 1980-1981, Marek settled once again in South Australia, establishing a studio in Eden Hills, where he died in 1993, the night before the official opening of the National Gallery of Australia's exhibition 'Surrealism: Revolution by Night', in which his works appeared.
Further Reference:
Gerbaz, Alex. 'Innovations in Australian Cinema: An Historical Outline of Australian Experimental Film', Journal of the National Film and Sound Archives 3.1 (2008): 1-12.
Mould, Stephen. 'Dusan Marek: A Landlocked Czech Surrealist in the Antipodes', Papers of Surrealism 6 (Autumn 2007): 1-19.
