Frank Weitzel

During World War One their German name and their anti-conscription sympathies led to the family being viewed with suspicion, and Weitzel's father was interned on Matui / Somes Island as an enemy alien, despite being a naturalised New Zealand citizen since 1902.

[2] After his father's death, Weitzel's mother took in boarders and became increasingly angry at the New Zealand authorities; she applied unsuccessfully to be repatriated to Germany, and in 1921 moved to San Francisco with Frank (was 16 and had just begun attending art classes) and another of her children.

[6] He worked from a studio over a butcher shop on Circular Quay, making prints and creating bookends, wall hangings, linocut batik shawls, and lampshades.

[3] To raise funds he created bookplates and exhibited for sale sculptures, linocuts, and printed scarves and shawls at Macquarie Galleries and Dorrit Black's Modern Art Centre.

He arrived in London in 1930 with an introduction to Claude Flight, who invited him to join the Grosvenor School circle on linocut artists, and create colourful multiple block prints, some in abstract designs.

"[2] The editor and Bloomsbury Group member David Garnett was unimpressed by Weitzel's illustration, but so taken with his sculpture he let him live rent-free as a caretaker in Hilton Hall, his country home in Cambridgeshire.

[8] Weitzel set up a sculpture studio in Hilton, and wrote to the journalist Colin Simpson in Australia: "Now I am working on a show of my own which is being arranged for me by some terrific money bags".

[9] Weitzel's sister Mary had travelled to England to bring back 41 works for the show, which included linocuts and sculpture as well as poster designs for Underground Railways and Shell Motor Spirit.