John Kaldor AO (b. 1936), Director of Kaldor Public Art Projects and one of Australia's most important art patrons, was born in Hungary and became interested in art while he and his family were refugees in Paris after the Second World War. Accepted by Australia, they came to Sydney, where in 1949 his parents founded a branch of the textile company Sekers Silk. Following study in London, he attended the Textile College of Zurich under the direction of Bauhaus master Johannes Itten. He founded his own textile company in Sydney in 1970. By this time, he had started building his own art collection, and in 1969 he’d instigated the creation of Wrapped Coast, a work by artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude in which 2.5 kilometres of cliff face above Sydney's Little Bay was swathed in a million square feet of white fabric. The work became the first in a series of groundbreaking contemporary art installations realised through Kaldor Public Art Projects, and involving international artists such as Gilbert and George, Sol LeWitt and Jeff Koons. In 2011, Kaldor gifted his $35 million collection of international contemporary art to the Art Gallery of New South Wales. He has served on the councils of Tate Modern and the Museum of Contemporary Art, and on the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Gift of the artist 2002. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
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