Title
Abstract painting
1950
Artist
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Details
- Date
- 1950
- Media category
- Painting
- Materials used
- oil on hardboard
- Dimensions
- 61.0 x 75.9 cm board; 63.1 x 78.5 x 2.3 cm frame
- Signature & date
Signed and dated l.l. corner, white oil "GRACE CROWLEY -/50".
- Credit
- Purchased 1953
- Location
- South Building, ground level, 20th-century galleries
- Accession number
- 8720
- Copyright
- © Reproduced with permission of Grace Crowley Estate
- Artist information
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Grace Crowley
Works in the collection
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About
Grace Crowley was a pioneer of abstraction in Australia. After studying in Paris in the late 1920s under the cubist artists André Lhote and Albert Gleizes, she returned to Australia and by 1932 had co-founded one of Sydney’s first modern art schools. Established with fellow artist Rah Fizelle, the school became the principal centre for modernist painting in Sydney until its closure in 1937.
Through her work as both artist and teacher, Crowley influenced a key group of modernists in Sydney and became significant in advancing the city’s contemporary art movements. Her own work was a modified, academic cubism based on planar geometry and dynamic symmetry.
Crowley’s intensely coloured, geometric compositions pulsate with an innate energy, encapsulating her belief in the correspondences between the rhythms of her abstraction and the systems of the universe.
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Exhibition history
Shown in 7 exhibitions
Project 4 - Grace Crowley (1975), Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 10 May 1975–08 Jun 1975
Review: works by women from the permanent collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 08 Mar 1995–04 Jun 1995
Spirit and place: art in Australia 1861-1996, Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia, 21 Nov 1996–31 Mar 1997
The Real Thing, Museum of Modern Art at Heide, Melbourne, 08 Dec 1997–22 Feb 1998
Hard Edge, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 07 Aug 1999–24 Oct 1999
Parallel Visions: Twenty-two artists from the Australian collection, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 22 Feb 2002–May 2003
The View from 1919, Tamworth Regional Gallery, Tamworth, 01 Jun 2019–28 Jul 2019
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Bibliography
Referenced in 10 publications
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Herbert Badham, A gallery of Australian art, 'Introduction', pg. v-vii., Sydney, 1954, xi, (illus.). plate no. 62
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Sue Cramer, Colour sensation: the works of Melinda Harper, 'Colour sensation: the works of Melinda Harper', pg. 21-36, Bulleen, 2015, 26, 27 (colour illus.).
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Juliana Engberg (Curator), The Real Thing, Australia, 1997, 30 (colour illus.), 85.
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Ewen McDonald, AGNSW Collections, 'From Colonialism to late Modernism', pg. 7-106, Sydney, 1994, 47 (colour illus.).
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Ross Mellick and Nick Waterlow, Spirit and place: Art in Australia 1861-1996, Sydney, Nov 1996, 146.
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Andrew Sayers, Australian art, 'Icon and abstraction 1951-68', pg. 174-195, Oxford, 2001, 176 (colour illus.). plate no. 98
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Jill Skyes, Look, 'Grace Crowley: a relationship hidden in the archives', pg. 26-27, Sydney, Sep 2010, 26, 27. General reference, article relates to Dianne Ottley's 'Grace Crowley's Contribution to Australian Modernism and Geometric Abstraction'.
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Daniel Thomas AM (Curator), Project 4: Grace Crowley, Sydney, 1975. cat.no. 29
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Natalie Wilson, Parallel visions: works from the Australian collection, 'Grace Crowley / Ralph Balson / Frank Hinder / Margel Hinder', pg. 88-103, Sydney, 2002, 92 (colour illus.), 142, 147.
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Grace Crowley's contribution to Australian modernism and geometric abstraction, 'Partnership in abstraction', pg. 105-130, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2010, 123 (illus.). figure 5.5
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