Gert Sellheim Travel Posters

Overview

This issue comprises three travel posters by influential graphic designer Gert Sellheim (1901‒1970). Sellheim was born in Estonia to German parents. He studied architecture in Germany, Austria and France before immigrating to Australia, arriving in Fremantle, Western Australia in 1926. In 1930 he moved to Melbourne, where he practised as an industrial and commercial designer.

Throughout the 1930s and 40s Sellheim designed the striking lithographic posters for which he is now best known. These were predominantly travel posters for the Australian National Travel Association (Australia: Surf Club, c. 1936, Sunshine and Surf: Australia, c. 1936) Australian Railways and Victorian Railways (The Seaside Calls: Go by Train, c. 1938). In contrast to many of his Australian-trained contemporaries, Sellheim’s hard-edged, abstract style was strongly influenced by European modernist movements, including Art Deco, Surrealism, Futurism and Dada.

In 1939, he won the Sulman Prize for his mural decoration on the wall of the Victorian Government Tourist Bureau, Hotel Australia building, Collins Street, Melbourne. In 1945, Sellheim and his family moved to Sydney, where he established a successful design studio. Sellheim designed the first iteration of the iconic Qantas “flying kangaroo” logo in 1947. He was among the first artists to draw inspiration from the art of Indigenous Australians, and in 1948 designed a postage stamp in homage to Aboriginal art.

Sellheim died at his home in Lane Cove in 1970, at the age of 68.   

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