Stages

Cress was born in Poona, India, studied at the Birmingham College of Art in England, and in 1962 came to Australia, settling first in Melbourne. Over the ensuing two decades he became a leading practitioner of Australian abstract painting. From the late 1970s however, figurative forms began to dominate his work, abstract elements becoming elemental devices for creating three-dimensional spaces which reflected the artist's strong interest in the private world of Balthus and the compositional dramas of old masters (eg. Goya). This print relates to a series of paintings and pastels from 1985 titled 'Stages', in which dark curtain-like forms fall and open to reveal colourful landscapes in the background of the image.