Meet the woman who brought Bauhaus to Australia

Margo Lewers, the interior designer and abstract artist credited with introducing Bauhaus concepts to Australia in the 1930s and ’40s, loved colour and lived a colourful life – including transforming her house into a Bohemian paradise that was regularly frequented by high-profile artists, such as author Patrick White.

Despite having no formal art qualifications when she left school, in 1935 she began a thriving business decorating hand-made ceramics, printing textiles, and then producing furniture through her shop Notanda Gallery, in Rowe Street, once Sydney’s design Mecca.

From this week Penrith Regional Gallery, home of The Lewers Bequest, will host an exhibition of the art and life of Margo Lewers (1908–1978), and launch a book No Limits, with insights from her daughters on the story of one of the nation’s best 20th century Modernist artists.

When Lewers and her sculptor husband Gerald Lewers moved from Cremorne to Emu Plains in 1952, to have more space to create art they became known as “the bohemians on the river”.

“When our parents moved to Emu Plains, they didn’t have any furniture,” her daughter jeweller Darani Lewers recalls.

“Margo decided instead of having furniture she would use colour, so she painted every single slat on the Venetian blinds a slightly different tone, she would dye the carpets and pillow slips so that the whole house was a celebration of colour.”

Paintings were hung in the kitchen, prints covered the walls in the bathroom, which their mother tiled herself in a Mondrian-like mosaic in shades of greys, creams, and biscuit-beige in geometric shapes like the Modernist master.

Over decades, Margo transformed an old pig farm on the banks of the Nepean River into a vibrant garden resembling a colourful abstract painting and creative hub, where “ideas hurtled, argument flared, voices shouted, sparks flew,” as author Patrick White, a regular guest, wrote.