‘Migrating Modernism. The architecture of Harry Seidler’ on Display at SMAC, Venice

A major retrospective charting the legacy of pioneering modernist architect Harry Seidler opened at the San Marco Art Centre (SMAC) in the Procuratie in Venice on May 9 2025.

Running until July 13 2025, ‘Migrating Modernism. The architecture of Harry Seidler’ is an exhibition that provides a comprehensive overview of Seidler’s life and work. Curated by Ann Stephen from Chau Chak Wing Museum at the University of Sydney and Paolo Stracchi from the university’s School of Architecture Design and Planning, with curatorial advisor Nikolaus Hirsch, the retrospective features drawings, models, letters, photographs, personal documents, objects and artworks that chart Seidler’s early life, design lineage, most influential buildings and noteworthy collaborations.

“The exhibition demonstrates the enormous contributions Seidler made to architecture, placing them in a broader international context,” says Anna Busaux, co-founder of SMAC with David Damazio and David Hrankovic.

Seidler, who died in 2006, is well known for his key place in Australian architectural history, and this retrospective emphasises the significance of his work at a global scale. “The exhibition demonstrates the enormous contributions Seidler made to architecture, placing them in a broader international context,” says Anna Busaux, co-founder of SMAC with David Damazio and David Hrankovic.

“In addition to being a major yet overlooked figure of 20th-century modernism, Seidler’s life story is a mirror of the 20th century and speaks to the movement of ideas through the displacement of people, as well as human resilience and creativity in the face of adversity,” says Damazio. “We felt that a historical, monographic retrospective was a robust companion to the Biennale [of Architecture] and that a survey of Seidler’s career, the first in Europe to include a large selection of original material, was timely.”

Seidler’s peripatetic life prior to Australia disposed him to an understanding of both the international architectural zeitgeist and culture more widely, especially the visual arts.

Born in Vienna in 1923, at age 15, Seidler fled Nazism to England, where he was held in an internment camp as an ‘enemy alien’, deported to Canada and interned again. Upon his release, he completed his architectural studies and registration, then moved to the United States, where he worked under some of modernism’s most influential architects, including Walter Gropius, Marcel Breur, Oscar Niemeyer and Josef Albers. Finally, at age 24 in 1948, he settled in Australia and started his own highly successful private practice the following year. His extraordinary life is represented in the exhibition through “incredibly personal objects from the Seidler archive or on loan from his family, such as the prison shirt he wore in camp, which is a generous loan from the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney, or his diaries from camp, or some of his personal objects like his glasses, camera and many letters he and his wife Penelope exchanged with major figures of the time,” says Hrankovic.

From the adversity of his youth during the Second World War to his studies in Canada and early career in the United States working under luminaries of modernism, Seidler’s peripatetic life prior to Australia disposed him to an understanding of both the international architectural zeitgeist and culture more widely, especially the visual arts. ‘Migrating Modernism’ highlights his numerous collaborations over the course of his long and celebrated career in Australia, which saw him work with artists Alexander Calder, Helen Frankenthaler, Sol LeWitt and Frank Stella, architect Josef Albers, designer Lin Utzon and famed Italian structural engineer Pier Luigi Nervi, among others.

“Living in Sydney, we see how Seidler’s modern vision introduced a distinctly cosmopolitan culture to Australian cities – not only through his buildings but also through the art he brought into public spaces.”

“Living in Sydney, we see how Seidler’s modern vision introduced a distinctly cosmopolitan culture to Australian cities – not only through his buildings but also through the art he brought into public spaces,” says curator Stephen. Australia Square, completed in 1967, is a key example of how Seidler’s influences, vision, architectural prowess and artistic sensibility coalesced to create one of Australia’s most forward-thinking precincts. Conceived in 1961, by the time it was built seven years later, it held the distinction of the world’s tallest building of lightweight concrete construction. Often lauded as Australia’s first skyscraper, the 50-storey tower’s 20 surrounding columns and distinctive ribbed ceiling were the result of Seidler’s collaboration with Nervi.

Seidler enhanced the building’s gesture to the public realm with a sculpture, Crossed Blades by Alexander Calder, and tapestries by Le Corbusier and Victor Vasarely that hung around the central core. Over the decades, the tapestries faded in the sun, and in 2002, Seidler commissioned the artwork Bars of Colour (Australia Square) by Sol LeWitt. Crafted from enamelled aluminium, impervious to fading, the slivers of colour are seen from points around the city, especially when spotlit at night, representing a distinctive and well-loved public artwork encased within the architecture.

The exhibition not only reflects on the legacy of highly significant projects such as Australia Square, but it also provides direct insight into Seidler’s design process and his efforts to document his work post-completion.

The exhibition not only reflects the legacy of highly significant projects, but it also provides direct insight into Seidler’s design process and his efforts to document his work post-completion. “Drawings, schematics, photographs and models of his buildings … illustrate his major contributions to architecture and document his practice,” explains Hrankovic. “Also included is a large Seidler drawing of the MLC Centre on loan from MAXXI, which illustrates how architects pitched in the early 1970s, which is a rare and wonderful insight into architectural practice of the time.”

Representing the first major international Seidler retrospective, ‘Migrating Modernism’ draws together the threads of his life, architectural work and artist collaborations to offer visitors a deepened understanding of one of Australia’s most influential architects. Just as Seidler enthusiastically engaged with and promoted a global modernist design vision through the various contexts and typologies within which he worked, the exhibition turns this lens back on the man himself to highlight his contribution to the modernist movement, of which he was so passionate.

‘Migrating Modernism. The architecture of Harry Seidler’ is co-organised by SMAC and the University of Sydney’s Chau Chak Wing Museum.  The exhibition is on view at SMAC, Venice, until July 13 2025.