| Russell Drysdale |
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| australian painters | |
| drysdale, russell | |
| 1912 births | |
| 1981 deaths | |
| people from bognor regis | |
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Apprenticeship Born in Bognor Regis , Sussex , England , to an Anglo-Australian pastoralist family, and settled in Melbourne from 1923, Drysdale seemed destined for a life on the land until a chance encounter in 1932 with artist and critic Daryl Lindsay awakened him to the possiblity of a career as an artist. Supported by a stipend from his family, Drysdale studied with the modernist artist and teacher George Bell in Melbourne, as well as undertaking a number of trips to Europe to experience Modernism at first hand. By the time of his return from the third of these trips in June 1939 Drysdale was recognised within Australia as an important emerging talent, but had yet to find a personal vision. His decision to leave Melbourne for Albury and then Sydney in 1940 was instrumental in his discovery of his life-long subject matter, the Australian outback and its inhabitants. Equally important was the influence of fellow artist Peter Purves-Smith in guiding him towards his characteristic mature style with its use of desolate landscapes inhabited by sparse figures under ominous skies. Sydney Drysdale's 1942 solo exhibition in Sydney (his second in point of time - his first had been in Melbourne in 1938) was a critical success, and established him as one of the leading Sydney modernists of the time, together with William Dobell , Elaine Haxton , and Donald Friend . His reputation continued to grow during the 1940s, with a series of paintings of drought-ravaged western New South Wales and later a series based on the derelict gold-mining town of Hill End . A painting of the nearby town of Sofala won the Wynne Prize for landscape in 1947. London 1950 His 1950 exhibition at London's Leicester Galleries, at the invitation of Sir Kenneth Clark , was a significant milestone in the history of Australian art. Until this time, Australian art had been regarded as a provincial sub-species of British art; Drysdale's works convinced British critics that Australian artists had a distinctive vision of their own, exploring a physical and psychological landscape at once mysterious, poetic, and starkly beautiful. The exhibition intiated the international recognition of Australian art that quickly came to include Dobell, Sidney Nolan , Arthur Boyd , Clifton Pugh , and others who came to national and international prominance in the 1950s. Maturity Drysdale's stature continued to grow throughout the 1950s and 1960s as he explored remote Australia and its inhabitants. In 1954, together with Nolan and Dobell, he was chosen to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale, and in 1960, aged 48, he was given a retrospective exhibtion at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the first artist of his generation to honoured in this way during his own lifetime. In 1963 he was appointed a Trustee of the Gallery, and in 1969 was knighted for his services to Ausrtalian art. This period of professional triumph was marred by personal tragedy, when first his son and then his wife committed suicide in successive years in 1962 and 1963. He remarried in 1964, to the widow of Peter Purvis-Smith (who had died in 1949), and settled at Bouddi near Gosford, New South Wales. His latter years saw a marked falling off in the quantity of his output, which had never been large, and died in Sydney on 29 June 1981. Assessments Drysdale's output of paintings was surprisingly small - only fifteen solo exhibitions, all between 1938 and 1973. As this implies, he was a perfectionist, working slowly and painstakingly. He also took a very cerebral approach to his painting - not for him the unmediated, immediate reaction to the subject, recorded in a few bold guestures. Every canvas was the culmination of thinking, drawing, composing, rethinking, recomposing, painting, scraping, beginning over. By the time of his death Drysdale's stock among serious artistic circles had sunk considerably. Yet he was instrumental in redefining the way Australians saw their own country, and also instrumental, albeit not uniquely so, in integrating Australian art into the mainstream of the contemporary Western tradition, after a twenty year period (the period between the two world wars) when the Australian artistic establishment had deliberately tried to isolate the country from the 'degenerates and perverts' (to quote J. S. McDonald, the reactionary Director of the National gallery of Victoria) responsible for modernism. Lou Klepac, summing up in his 1983 work on Drysdale, says: "He found in the common elements of the landscape permanent and moving images which have become part of the visual lingua franca of modern Australia...Those who see in Drysdale's paintings a world remote from the comforts and pleasures they depend on, feel that he depicts loneliness and isolation. To him it was the opposite, a liberation from the anguish of the civilised world." See also Art Of Australia External links |
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