Hairbrush and mirror

Adelaide Perry was an important painter and teacher amongst the group of ‘Sydney moderns’ – a loose coalition of twentieth century interwar artists whose work represents the first significant wave of modernist culture in Australia. Printmaking played a vital and important role in this progressive movement, reflecting international developments such as the colour linocuts of Britain’s Grosvenor School, but with a distinctively local flavour. Perry was a key teacher of modern art and design in Sydney and used printmaking to demonstrate modern artistic ideas, influencing a generation of artists.
Perry’s own prints placed great emphasis on strong design principles, and in particular, eschewing colour. ‘Hairbrush and mirror’ is one of her earliest linocuts. Characteristically modern with its simplified forms and strong graphic quality, it depicts an intimate yet prosaic subject of a woman dressing, underscoring the strongly female nature of Australian modernism in that period.