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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  The Australian Art Collection of Sandra Powell & Andrew King
• Sale Date:
  19 Mar 2014 ~ 6.30pm
• Lot #:
  23
• Lot Description:
  Brett Whiteley
  (1939-1992)
  Abstract, 1958
  oil on canvas
  50 x 106cm
  signed and dated upper right
• Provenance:
  Gift from the artist; Thence by descent; Sotheby's, Fine Australian and European Paintings, Melbourne 25 - 26 August 1997, lot 251 (illustrated)
• References:
  Kathie Sutherland, Brett Whiteley: A Sensual Line 1957-1967, Macmillan Art Publishing, Melbourne, 2010, p. 30 (illustrated); p. 226, cat. AA22; Chris Johnson, 'A couples passion for emerging street art is taking local artists from tags to riches', The Age, Melbourne, 11 June 2011, p. 3
• Notes:
  In recent years Brett Whiteley's early paintings emerged from relative obscurity to being recognised as striking and surprisingly mature works of enduring importance. This new appreciation of the artist's formative years coincided with two important exhibitions organised by the Brett Whiteley Studio and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Genesis of a Painter: The Early Abstractions of Brett Whiteley and Brett Whiteley: Sydney Genesis and Beyond 1955-1965, and was further illustrated in Kathie Sutherland's notable monograph Brett Whiteley: A Sensual Line 1957-1967. These studies demonstrated how Whiteley's early abstract compositions were not just experiments in a vacuum or flirtations with a new pictorial vocabulary, but were the foundations on which his later oeuvre would flourish. On this point, Sutherland noted how 'virtually every subject and technique of note in the Whiteley's opus makes an appearance during these creatively critical years'1. Many Australian and international influences have been identified for guiding Whiteley's stylistic developments over the decades: Graham Sutherland and Lloyd Rees with the anthropomorphic interpretation of landscape painting; Francis Bacon and De Kooning in their distortions of the human figure; the sensual female arches and curves found in the figures of Edgar Degas and Roger Hilton; Matisse with Bonnard in the expressive, sometimes explosive interiors; and American George Sheridan and Nicolas de Sta‘l in their more academic, formal and geometric abstract compositions. De Sta‘l, an artist Whiteley lauded as one of his heroes2, aspired throughout his career to paint both figurative and the abstract compositions, or what the French painter described as 'l'entre-deux, what lies between the two'.3 Painted shortly before Whiteley joined the Australian artistic diaspora to Europe and London, Abstract 1958, was as a sort of antithesis, or the one extreme of l'entre-deux, to the soup kitchen interiors, mining townscapes and Sydney streetscapes painted that same year. Any attempt of narration, figuration or topography disappear completely and make space for a mixture of warm and earthy patches with grey, white and green dabs of amorphous painterly mass with no recognisable worldly referent. Depth of field and perspective are eliminated resulting in heightened flatness - an aesthetic sensibility which becomes increasingly pronounced after Whiteley's arrival in Italy and his subsequent encounter with paintings by Cimabue and Duccio. Abstract 1958 is possibly Whiteley's first purely abstract painting and equally importantly is one of the only paintings which testifies to Whiteley's interests and nod to Jackson Pollock's school of abstract expressionism. The intertwining, crisscrossed splashes, drips and splatters of black paint that extend over the composition horizontally are the embryonic precursors to the gestural and expressive qualities that Whiteley develops in his later paintings, including the Bathroom series. 1 Kathie Sutherland, Brett Whiteley: A Sensual Line 1957-1967, Macmillan Art Publishing, Melbourne, 2010, p. 7 2 Ibid., p. 29 3 Richard Wollheim, 'Yellow Sky, Red Sea, Violet Sands', London Review of Books, Vol. 25 No. 14 á 24 July 2003, p. 7
• Estimate:
  A$30,000 - 50,000
• 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.