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Details
- Place where the work was made
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Melbourne
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Victoria
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Australia
- Date
- 1960
- Media category
- Watercolour
- Materials used
- watercolour, gouache on paper
- Dimensions
- 59.8 x 62.8cm sheet sight; 81.3 x 83.6 x 3.0cm frame
- Signature & date
Signed and dated l.r., black gouache "H. MAUDSLEY '60".
- Credit
- Edward Hamilton Stinson Fund 2019
- Location
- South Building, ground level, 20th-century galleries
- Accession number
- 45.2019
- Copyright
- © Helen Maudsley
- Artist information
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Helen Maudsley
Works in the collection
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About
Helen Maudsley is best known for her complex paintings and drawings that are reflections on human relationships and the surrounding world. They are deeply autobiographical pictorial puzzles of intricate personal symbols and motifs constructed into geometric labyrinthine-like compositions.
There are distinct phases in Maudsley’s artistic career. Until 1967 she worked predominantly in gouache, watercolour and ink due to space and time constraints caused by a lack of personal studio in her home whilst raising four young daughters. In 1967 her husband, the artist John Brack moved into a purpose-built studio and Helen inherited his old studio in their house. It was around this time that Maudsley returned to working in oil paint, which she had not used since her student days. Maudsley has continued to make her detailed geometric paintings in oil since then, building them up first with drawings in pencil.
Maudsley’s early works are quite figurative and visually different to her mature geometric oil paintings. This early work on paper is a striking portrait of Barbara Blackman (poet and wife/muse to Charles Blackman) and others of her contemporaries including Joy Hester. This work is typical of Maudsley’s early surrealist inspired style.
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Places
Where the work was made
Melbourne
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Exhibition history
Shown in 3 exhibitions
Helen Maudsley, Argus Gallery, Melbourne, 1961–1961
Minnie Crouch Prize for Watercolour, Art Gallery of Ballarat, Ballarat, 1961–1961
2018 Blue Chip XX: The Collectors Exhibition, Niagara Galleries, Richmond, 06 Mar 2018–07 Apr 2018
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Bibliography
Referenced in 1 publication
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Niagara Galleries, Blue Chip XX: The collectors’ exhibition: featuring works from the private collection of the late Ruth Prowse, Richmond, 2018, 48 (colour illus.).
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