He was one of the modern architects Graz lost in the 1930s: Eugen Székely/Szekey (1894-1962), who emigrated to Haifa in 1935 and built the textile industry ATA, emblematic of Israel’s rebuilding generation, as well as the private house of the company’s founder, who was born in Vienna, Hans Moller (1896-1962). The only buildings of his that remain in Graz are the semi-detached houses in the neighbouring Amselgasse, which were built in 1933 as an emergency building programme for unemployed people. The search for traces follows Szekey’s path and explores the question of what his buildings in Israel have in common with those in Amselgasse.
Heidi Schatzl operates at the intersection of space, art and research. Artistic fieldwork on modernist architecture, with narrative set pieces occupying a key position in the research interest. She is currently researching Viennese Modernism in Haifa, based on the archival research conducted in 2017 on Adolf Loos’s Modernism, which was confiscated under National Socialism, and the BKA Foreign Studio in Tel Aviv 2019.
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