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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  The John Buckley Collection of Modern & Contemporary Australian Art
• Sale Date:
  13 May 2014 ~ 6.30pm
• Lot #:
  46
• Lot Description:
  Robert Jacks
  (born 1943)
  Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow, Blue and Green 1987
  oil on canvas
  167 x 252 cm
  signed, titled and dated verso
• Provenance:
  Sotheby's Australia, Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 2 October 1994, Lot 214 (illustrated)
• Notes:
  "You made me confess the fears that I have. But I will tell you also what I do not fear." - James Joyce Painter, sculptor, printmaker and draughtsman, Robert Jacks has remained true to his beginnings of hard-edge abstraction. From a young age, Jacks was attracted to flat, non-representational art and identifies a book on the art of Ben Nichols as one of the first books he ever purchased1. An alumnus of the Prahran Technical College and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Jacks had his first solo show at Melbourne's Gallery A. Interestingly, Jack's art has always been incredibly popular with the various directors of the National Gallery of Victoria: James Mollison was the manager of Gallery A when Jack's first exhibition was held; on that occasion, Eric Westbrook purchased one work for himself and another Timbrel and Harpsoothe, 1965 on behalf of the NGV; Patrick McCaughey later defined these works as 'cool, elegant and sophisticated'2; and Tony Ellwood is evidently a supporter, with the NGV having recently announced that October 2014 will host the first, overdue, major retrospective on Robert Jacks' life and oeuvre. Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow, Blue and Green is a testament to Robert Jacks' faithfulness to hard-edge abstraction. In the face of changing local and international tides and tastes, over the decades the artist avoided any brusque departure from his early and natural, pictorial vocabulary and continued to reinvent his art through one style. The work is a bold statement of colour and form, where wedges of primary colours, green and white come together, like Mondrian-esque blocks succumbing to the pull of gravity from the large canvas. In reviewing Jacks' 1987 exhibition at Australian Galleries in which the current work was shown, critic Robert Rooney applauded the artist for his commitment and perseverance and identified Jacks as 'the perfect candidate for exhibitions pushing the line of resistance to current art practices other than abstraction'3. 1 Ken McGregor, Robert Jacks: Past Unfolded, Crafstman House, Sydney, Ken McGregor, 2001, p. 14. 2 Patrick McCaughey, 'Robert Jacks' Sensibility', Harmonica Mundi, Robert Lindsay Gallery, Melbourne 1994.
• Estimate:
  A$12,000 - 18,000
• 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.