George and Charis Schwarz met on a beach in Spain in the early 1960s. They rode overland to Australia on a BMW motorbike, and settled in Sydney where they made art together from 1969 until George’s death in 2021.  

Perhaps inner-Sydney’s last Bohemians, their passionate collaboration bore avant-garde films, photography, mixed-media works, collages, one-off artist books and scripts, librettos and unpublished novels. 

‘Their eye is distinct in its interest in a particular kind of storytelling, of identity, of a life in art,’ says Craig Judd, artist, curator and close friend of the couple, ‘uniquely different to the familiar canons of Australian art and photography of the time.’ 

The George and Charis Schwarz collection was presented to the State Library by the artists in May 2019.