Dutkiewicz, Ludwik   (1921- 2008)

Ludwik Dutkiewicz was born in Stara Sol, near Lwow, Poland, on 2 February 1921. He died in Adelaide in 2008.

He migrated to Australia in 1949, and settling in Adelaide was elected Fellow of the Royal South Australian Society of Arts in 1951. In the same year he had a joint exhibition with his brother, Wladyslaw Dutkiewicz, at the RSASA. In 1953 he was awarded the Cornell Prize at the Contemporary Art Society of South Australia (CASSA) and won it again in 1954.

Ludwik had joined the staff of the Botanic Gardens on 19 February 1953 as a botanical illustrator. His work in this field was published in many journals and books, and has received international recognition. During his final years in the Botanic Gardens and State Herbarium, he concentrated on line drawings and his work features extensively in the early volumes of the Journal of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens, the fourth edition of The Flora of South Australia by J.P. Jessop and H. Toelken (1986) and, in his year of retirement, Flowering Plants in Australia by B. Morley and H. Toelken (1983).

The artistic output of Dutkiewicz shows a remarkable dicothomy between the mostly expressionist and abstract paintings extending over more than thirty years carried out in his private time and the accomplished botanical illustrations undertaken as a public servant.

See also: Obituary by Adam Dutkiewicz in Australian Systematic Botany Society Newsletter No.135, June 2008, pp.14-15.

Source: extracted from  http://moonarrow.nfshost.com/space-plus/   viewed 20/05/2008
ABRS contributors survey, mid-1980s
Portrait Photo: Australian Systematic Botany Society Newsletter No.135, June 2008