From Australia’s Jewish past

Georges Mora – entrepreneur, art dealer, patron, connoisseur, and restaurateur

Georges was born Günther Morawski on June 26, 1913, in Leipzig, Germany, to a Jewish bourgeois family of Polish descent.

At the age of seventeen, as a medical student, Günther fled Germany due to Nazi persecution and went to Paris, where he found work as a patent clerk. In 1940, and the fall of France, he changed his Polish-Jewish name to evade detection by the authorities. Georges, as he became known, became involved with the Resistance, smuggling refugees and Allied airmen across Europe. A most dangerous existence, which unfortunately left him a troubled sleeper for the rest of his life, springing awake at the slightest noise.

In 1947, he married Mirka Zelik, a French-born Jewish refugee artist. Their belief that a devastated Europe was no place to raise a family and mounting fears of an atomic war prompted their migration to Australia in 1951, by then with their first son, Philippe.

The couple settled in Melbourne and later had two more sons, William and Tiriel. The family rented a large, disused sculptor’s studio in Collins Street as accommodation, and Georges began work at a noodle factory. Their address brought them into contact with some of the city’s leading artists and collectors.

Georges and Mirka were asked if the Contemporary Art Society could exhibit in their basement flat. This was where paintings by (Sir) Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd, John Perceval, Albert Tucker, Charles Blackman, and many others were included in the Anti-Royal Tour Exhibition of 1954. Georges was drawn into the Society, forming close friendships with many in the art world, and served as its president from 1956 to 1959. In 1958, he became a councillor of its offshoot, the Museum of Modern Art of Australia.

During the 1950s and 1960s, the couple opened the European-style Mirka Café in Exhibition Street, which happened to be the first Melbourne café with outdoor seating, followed by the Balzac in East Melbourne, which was the first restaurant with a licence to serve liquor after 10 pm, as well as introducing Melburnians to authentic French provincial cooking. This restaurant then became the Tolarno in St Kilda and was the perfect place to conjoin dining with art.

He hired a French-trained English chef and commissioned Arthur Boyd and John Perceval to produce the crockery, while the artists Mike Brown, Colin Lanceley, and Ross Crothall made works for a feature wall. In 1965, he relocated, purchasing the Tolarno Hotel in Fitzroy Street, St Kilda, to accommodate their home, a restaurant, a private hotel, and a gallery.

The restaurant’s décor was striking, as Mirka, with the assistance of Martin Sharp, Australian artist and cartoonist, painted the walls with images of angels and magical creatures reminiscent of Eastern European folk arts.

By 1967, Georges had converted a spacious room at the hotel’s rear into a splendid exhibition venue. Tolarno Galleries had an instant impact on the local art scene. He mixed exhibitions of established artists with shows by young painters. As a rising art dealer, he also travelled to Europe to organise annual displays of graphic work by modern masters, beginning with lithographs by Renoir. Usually attired in an understated—but tailored—dark suit, he sported a flamboyant necktie carefully knotted in the Continental manner.

Exhibitions drew artists to Tolarno, although George’s flamboyant personality was the real hook. His eyes ever sparkled mischievously and, with a warm grin that some thought too innocent to be true, he exuded generosity. If you were young, broke, and an artist, he offered a meal on the house.

Gorges sold the private hotel at Tolarno in 1969. Five years later, fellow restaurateur Leon Massoni took over the dining room, allowing Mora to concentrate on the gallery. In 1979, he relocated Tolarno Galleries to South Yarra, and he became a key figure on the national art scene, advising corporates, including the National Australia Bank, on their collections. He helped found the Australian Commercial Galleries Association in 1976, serving as its first chairman. With his deputy chairman, the Sydney art dealer Frank Watters, he oversaw the adoption of a code of ethics for member galleries and steered the development of artist-gallery contracts. He also lobbied Federal arts ministers and the Australia Council for the Arts on matters of concern to the industry.

At the same time as Georges was making his name in the art and restaurant world, Mirka was becoming a Bohemian icon of the city. The couple separated in the early 1970s and, in 1985, George married another artist. They had one son, Sam, born in the same year. In 1988, he achieved his ambition to establish a commercial art fair in Australia. He served on the organising committee of the Australian Contemporary Art Fair, and Tolarno took a large stand. That year, he was appointed Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government (an honorary decoration that rewards people who have distinguished themselves in the field of art or literature or by the contribution they have made in France and in the world). In 1989, Georges was still managing the Tolarno Gallery in South Yarra.

Still running Tolarno Galleries, Georges was planning a third art fair when he was diagnosed with a brain tumour. He died on 7 June 1992 in South Caulfield, survived by his wife and their son, and the three sons from his first marriage,

That year, a biennial lecture was established in his honour and in 2006, the Georges Mora Foundation was formed to provide artist fellowships. Portraits of him were painted by Charles Blackman in 1956, when the two were working at the Eastbourne Café, later known as Balzac. Charles’s former wife, Barbara, comments that it is akin to a self-portrait, as she recalls the artist and his sitter looked very alike. The portrait is held in the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. His second wife also painted him in 1988.

George was a protector against parochialism; he recognised capacities in people and showed them what was possible in their hometown of Melbourne. What one might have viewed as risky, George would ensure was the accepted imperative. He offered a challenge with the safety net of his support. His influence on the way the public responds to contemporary art and the esteem in which artists are held continues to this day.

His son William can lay claim to being one of only three second-generation art dealers in business in Australia today. The Georges Mora Foundation, launched by Dame Elisabeth Murdoch in 2006, is a not-for-profit cultural foundation dedicated to the promotion of contemporary art and artists in Melbourne and Australia.

The AJHS acknowledges the following references in the preparation of this story:
Australian Dictionary of Biography – Christopher Heathcote, The George Mora Fellowship; Wikipedia; State Library of Australia; National Portrait Gallery; State Library of Victoria; Australian Contemporary Society

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