Title
The studio stairs, Firenze
1949
Artist
-
Details
- Place where the work was made
-
Florence
→
Tuscany
→
Italy
- Date
- 1949
- Media category
- Drawing
- Materials used
- ink and wash on ivory laid paper on hardboard
- Dimensions
- 47.5 x 30.5 cm sheet
- Signature & date
Signed and dated l.r., pen and ink "...'49/ Donald Friend.".
- Credit
- Tony Gilbert Bequest Fund 2013
- Location
- Not on display
- Accession number
- 284.2013
- Copyright
- © Reproduced with permission of the Estate of Donald Friend/Copyright Agency
- Artist information
-
Donald Friend
Works in the collection
- Share
-
-
About
In October 1948 Donald Friend and painter Peter Kaiser (a fellow resident of the artistic Woollahra boarding house Merioola, where Friend had lived since January 1946) booked a passage to Italy, departing Sydney on the Toscana on 25 March 1949, and arriving in Portofino on 11 May.
In June they moved to Florence and found a studio at Via Jacopo di Diacceto 6, belonging to a young African American artist from Michigan, Aberdeen Goodwin. Friend stayed here, until moving to London in October. The subject of this drawing is the vertigo-inducing spiral staircase found at the studio.
Friend remained friends with Aberdeen, returning to Florence for a second time in 1952; he again stayed with Aberdeen, this time in another room, the old studio having been let.
-
Exhibition history
Shown in 3 exhibitions
Donald Friend (1975), Holdsworth Galleries, Australia, 18 Mar 1975–26 Apr 1975
Donald Friend Retrospective 1915-1989, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 09 Feb 1990–25 Mar 1990
Donald Friend Retrospective 1915-1989, National Gallery of Victoria [St Kilda Road], Melbourne, 14 Apr 1990–06 Jun 1990
Donald Friend Retrospective 1915-1989, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, 26 Jun 1990–19 Aug 1990
Deutscher and Hackett: works from the Donald Friend collection including Bali and Southeast Asia, Deutscher and Hackett, Sydney, Paddington, 27 Oct 2013 -
-
Bibliography
Referenced in 1 publication
-
Barry Pearce, Donald Friend Retrospective 1915-1989, Sydney, 1990, 64. cat.no. 42
-
