Ola Cohn

Ola Cohn was born in 1892 in Bendigo on Dja Dja Wurrung and Taungurung Country. She studied drawing and modelling at the Bendigo School of Mines, and later, at the Swinburne Technical College. She joined the Victorian Artists’ Society in 1921, and the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors (MSWPS) in 1922, becoming its president in 1950 and remaining so until her death in 1964. Ethel Carrick was also a member and their friendship developed through the group.

In 1926 Cohn enrolled at the Royal College of Art, London, where she trained with the modernist sculptor Henry Moore. Returning to Melbourne in 1930, an exhibition of her work in 1931 established her as one of the most significant modernist sculptors in Australia. While her work attracted both disapproval and praise, she maintained a cool attitude towards conservative critics: 'Having spent my life studying sculpture, it seems ludicrous to be upset by the opinions of those who have not’.¹

Stone carving, learnt at the Royal College of Art, became increasingly important to Cohn. Over the following years she undertook numerous large scale public sculpture commissions. Among them was the Pioneer Women's Memorial Sculpture (1940–41) in Tarntanya/Adelaide, a vast work carved from Waikerie limestone. Sparely composed yet monumental in stature, it gave weight and worth to the lives of the women it memorialised.

Cohn was a force within the Naarm/Melbourne art world. She gave talks, demonstrations, private instruction, and was a lecturer at the Melbourne Kindergarten Training College between 1940–54. During World War II she organised recreational sculpture workshops for returning soldiers. She mentored younger women artists, including the sculptor and ceramicist Klytie Pate. She provided a permanent home for the MSWPS in her studio, which she subsequently bequeathed to the Council of Adult Education, and which later became the Ola Cohn Memorial Centre.

Cohn’s best loved work is The Fairies’ Tree which she carved into a Eucalyptus camaldulensis, or redgum, in Fitzroy Gardens. Made over three years, she persisted in her endeavour despite beestings, mosquito bites, rain, vandalism and the abuse of passersby. Completing the sculpture in 1934 she dedicated it to the children of Melbourne:

Elspeth Pitt, Senior Curator, Australian Art