Alex Mendelssohn

Who is Alex Mendelssohn?

Alex Mendelssohn is an Australian artist and opal miner of Hungarian descent. popularly known as Alex or his birth name Sándor Mendelssohn, he is the great-great-grandson of Felix Mendelssohn, the Romantic German composer who gave the world the famous Wedding March overture.

In an interview with Adelaide Now Alex Mendelssohn is quoted as saying "He composed on piano, and I compose on canvas," reflecting on his 200-year ancestry.

In another interview “His Colorful Life”, he professed to Kristina Meredith of Country Press South Australia that he is a born rebel and an adventurer at heart. Alex migrated from war-worn Hungary in the early 1950s to mine for opal in the stark opal town of Andamooka where the famous Andamooka Opal or Queen's Opal was discovered in the 1950s and presented to Queen Elizabeth II.

For Alex Mendelssohn, the isolated outback community built upon red earth, nicknamed ‘Mars on Earth' presents the freedom he craves, far away from the shackles of politics, war, and bureaucracy of his early years. In a radio interview 6.30 with George Negus Alex Mendelssohn expressed the reason he calls Andamooka his home: “You're not controlled by councils and regulations and laws and rules. You do whatever you bloody like.”