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• Auction House:
  Bonhams Australia
• Sale Name:
  Selected works from the collection of Bill Nuttall and Annette Reeves
• Sale Date:
  07 Jul 2020 ~ 6pm (AEST)
• Lot #:
  21
• Lot Description:
  Ralph Balson
  (1890-1964)
  Matter Painting, c.1958
  enamel on board
  106.5 x 137.0cm (41 15/16 x 53 15/16in).
  RELATED WORKS: Matter Painting No. 4, 1962, enamel and sand in synthetic polymer paint on composition board, 107.5 x 137.5cm, in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
• Provenance:
  Estate of the artist; The Bill Nuttall & Annette Reeves Collection, Melbourne
• Exhibited:
  Ralph Balson Matter Paintings, Bloomfield Galleries, Sydney, June 1988, cat. 1; Ralph Balson: 1890-1964, Niagara Galleries, Melbourne, June 1989, cat. 5; Ralph Balson and James Clifford Paintings, Watters Gallery, Sydney, June 1994, cat. 1; Blue Chip XV: The Collectors' Exhibition, Niagara Galleries, Melbourne, 4 - 29 June 2013, cat. 26 (label attached verso)
• Notes:
  In 1955 Balson turned 65 and was able to retire from his work as a house painter. He stayed on teaching part-time at the East Sydney Technical College in Darlinghurst, dividing his time between Sydney and Mittagong, where he had a studio in the garden of Grace Crowley's country house, High Hill. This final decade of his life was a more relaxed time for Balson. Apart from having the time to paint, he visited exhibitions, read copiously (from the latest international art trends to science and metaphysics) and exhibited in both local and international exhibitions, enjoying the recognition from his peers that now came his way (though it was still not without some controversy). In the 1930s and early '40s Balson had taken his inspiration from Piet Mondrian, constructing compositions of pure geometric abstraction with overlapping planes of clear bright colour. Both he and his friend and colleague Grace Crowley used coloured tissue paper to map out their complex compositions of overlapping circles, squares and rectangles, balancing cool and warm tones and giving the illusion of three-dimensional depth. However, by the early 1950s Balson began experimenting with a more fluid style, mostly expressed in a series of pastel drawings. A major turning point came in 1953 with the exhibition French Painting Today at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in which the style of Tachisme (from 'tache', the mark or the stain) was featured. 'He became increasingly interested in American Abstract Expressionists and at the beginning of the 1960's created a series of free-flowing works in enamel paint described as 'matter paintings', a title which was intended to draw attention to their non-objectivity. 'My Painting', wrote Balson, 'is not associative either of England or Australia, or going for a walk or coming back from one. I try and find out what the substance of paint will give me, to make a painting a 'Matter Painting'.1 Balson's matter paintings were to be his last major series. In the present work he employs his fluid and spontaneous technique of pouring the paint directly on to the board allowing the monochrome shades to infuse and form organic swirls. Rather than using the smooth, shiny side of the masonite, Balson has flipped the board to exploit the textured grooves on the underside, providing the perfect surface for the wet paint to ebb and flow, forming coagulated pools of rippled paint to great effect. 1. Andrew Sayers, Australian Art, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001, p. 175
• Estimate:
  A$40,000 - 60,000
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

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• Category:
  Art

This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.