sculptor, was born in 1912, according to Terry Ingram. She studied sculpture under Rayner Hoff at East Sydney Technical College and later taught there; Margel Hinder recalls taking over her teaching position and Anita Aarons remembers her as a fine wood-carver. Annis married a Swiss architect, possibly the subject of the sculpted portrait Emil Max Laeubli , exhibited by Beth McDonald with the Society of Artists in 1935. Ingram published an article on Laeubli on 4 May 1989 based on interviews with her sculptor contemporaries, plus a 1938 article in the women’s section of the Sydney Morning Herald that begins: 'The almost impossible has happened at Cinesound! A girl has refused the chance to become a famous film star’. It tells how Annis while working as a modelling sculptor at Cinesound, 'wearing men’s overalls, doing men’s work and drawing a man’s pay’, was offered an acting role in Dad and Dave by Ken Hall, who was impressed by her vivacious personality. She turned it down. Happy to continue doing plasterwork in order to gain experience, she was quoted as saying: 'Some day I hope to be a sculptor and model figures in wood or stone’. The article refers to her as 'Miss’ Annis Laeubli and the tone trivialises her equality with male workers; it also suggests that serious support for her art was hard to come by. Even Badham’s praise is tempered by reference to 'claims of domesticity’ – which seems ironic in the light of her preference for large-scale public commissions. Annis Laeubli died of cancer in June 1948, aged about thirty-seven.

Along with the sculptors Ola Cohn , Daphne Mayo , Tina Wentcher , Lyndon Dadswell and Arthur Fleischmann, Laeubli exhibited with the NSW Society of Artists at Sydney in the 1940s. Her exhibits included Self Portrait (terra cotta) in 1940 and The Tumblers (direct carving on perspex) and Lowana (mulga wood) in 1947. The last was purchased by the Art Gallery of NSW.

Writers:

Scheding, Stephen

Date written:

1995

Last updated:

2011