Blue Mountains

Frank Hinder’s legacy to Australian art is a body of prints, drawings and paintings that depict the dynamic rush of modern urban life. His work is remarkable for its rhythmic harmony and lyrical colour. A founding member of the Contemporary Art Society, Sydney, he was one of a small group of artists crusading for abstraction in Sydney during the 1930s. He had a strong interest in cubist and constructivist principles and theories of dynamic symmetry.

In 1924 at the age of 18 Hinder began studying art at Royal Art Society School Sydney, continuing his studies at East Sydney Technical College (now the National Art School) from 1925-27. During 1927 he travelled to the United States, where he studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, and then at the New York School of Fine and Applied Art (later known as Parsons). He returned to Australia in 1934 with his new wife, the sculptor Margel Hinder. In Sydney, they started a commercial art business and soon joined Grace Crowley and Rah Fizelle’s progressive Art School in George Street, bringing their knowledge of European and American abstraction to the group.

This monotype of the Blue Mountains was made during a period in Hinder’s career when he and Margel spent many weekends at the home of fellow artists Margo and Gerald Lewers in Emu Plains at the foot of the Blue Mountains. Hinder captures the mountain range in a dynamic manner in this monotype where the ink has been spontaneously applied to the plate and then printed or transferred onto a sheet of paper. Hinder later added finer detail with hand-drawn additions in charcoal.