Karl (Karol) Duldig was a Jewish modernist sculptor. He was born in Przemyśl (Premissl), Poland then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire due to annexation, and later moved to Vienna. Following the Anschluss in August 1938 he left Vienna and travelled to Switzerland where he was later joined by his wife Slawa Horowitz Duldig and his daughter Eva Duldig. In 1939 they travelled to Singapore – from where they were later deported, and were sent to Australia – where for two years he and his family were interned as enemy aliens. As a sculptor, he often used a minimalist style, won the 1956 Victorian Sculptor of the Year Award, and had an annual lecture established in his name by the National Gallery of Victoria.
Malay Boy (1939) by Karl Duldig, National Gallery Singapore
Unveiling of monument in Tel Aviv, Israel, sculpted in remembrance of sportspeople killed in the Holocaust, 1968.
Slawa Duldig née Horowitz was an inventor, artist, interior designer, and teacher. In 1928, as Slawa Horowitz, she created a design for an improved compact folding umbrella, which she patented in 1929. Slawa was the wife of the Polish-Austrian-Australian modernist sculptor Karl (Karol) Duldig. She was also the mother of Eva de Jong-Duldig, a champion Australian tennis player who played in Wimbledon, the French Championships, the Australian Open, and at the Maccabiah Games in Israel where she won two gold medals, and is founder of the present-day Duldig Studio, an artists' house museum in Melbourne, Australia.
Slawa kept her folding umbrella secret until she had secured a patent.