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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 #:
  81
• Lot Description:
  Robert Hunter
  (born 1947)
  No. 6 (For Carl) 1985
  synthetic polymer paint on plywood
  122 x 244 cm
  initialled and dated verso
• Provenance:
  Robert Hunter, Pinacotheca, Melbourne 1986
• Exhibited:
  Robert Hunter, Pinacotheca, Melbourne, May 1986, cat. no. 6
• Notes:
  Robert Hunter's phenomenal career development and critical reception lead the artist to immediate institutional recognition. In 1968, Tolarno Galleries staged his first solo exhibition, and later that year, his work was included in 'The Field' - a landmark exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, celebrating abstract art in Australia. Three years later, he was the only artist to represent Australia at the Second Triennial of India, New Delhi. And in 1974, just five years after his first exhibition, Hunter's work was included in the exhibition 'Eight Contemporary Artists' at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The MoMA exhibition included a roll call of some of the most important practitioners of the time including Italian conceptualist Alighiero Boetti, American performance artist Vito Acconci and French interventionist Daniel Buren.1 These major exhibitions brought Hunter in contact with local and international critics, curators and artists. It was at the Lalit Kala Akademi in New Delhi that Hunter first met and befriended the minimalist sculptor Carl Andre who was returning from his retrospective at the Guggenheim. Although the pair used different materials and methods in their art - Carl Andre often sourcing ready-made objects like bricks and metal sheets - the American artist would become chief among the several art historical and contemporary figures in whom Booth has found a kindred spirit. In 1978, Hunter and Andre collaborated in three joint exhibitions, hosted simultaneously the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, Newcastle Regional Art Gallery, Newcastle and at Pinacotheca, Melbourne. No. 6 (For Carl) 1985 is constructed using Hunter's minimal-conceptual framework to build upon subtle nuances of pinks, blues and greys. The smooth, brilliant surface, broken up in three horizontal bands, is punctuated by grooves that delineate the geometric boundaries of the squares, rectangles, triangles, parallelograms that draw the eyes inquisitively over the surface of the work, or as Charles Green has observed, 'Hunter's paintings trick the eye into active work, and in the process induce a sort of hypersensitive self-consciousness, or a consciousness of a knowing self'2. 1 Jennifer Licht, Eight Contemporary Artists, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1974. 2 Charles Green, 'Persistent subjectivity: Revaluing Robert Hunter', Robert Hunter, The Ian Potter Gallery, Melbourne, 1989 p.3
• Estimate:
  A$18,000 - 25,000
• 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.