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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen
• Sale Name:
  Important Art
• Sale Date:
  20 Nov 2017 ~ 6.30pm
• Lot #:
  14
• Lot Description:
  John Olsen
  (born 1928)
  Owls Over the Murrumbidgee, 1981
  oil on canvas
  183 x 167 cm
  signed and dated lower right: John Olsen, 1981
• Provenance:
  Investart, Wagga Wagga; Private collection, ACT
• Exhibited:
  Recent Works and Billabong Pictures: John Olsen and Noela Hjorth, Investart, Wagga Wagga, July 1981, cat no. 3
• References:
  Recent Works and Billabong Pictures: John Olsen and Noela Hjorth, Investart, Wagga Wagga, July 1981, (unpaginated exhibition catalogue)
• Notes:
  John Olsen’s recent retrospective at the National Gallery of Victoria demonstrated how the artist earned the eminent place he holds in twentieth century Australian art history. Examining his life’s story and reviewing his work, one marvels and admires his unflagging courage to follow his instinct and his tenacity to succeed, even in the face of adversity or critical neglect. Even as he nears his ninetieth year, it cannot be denied that John Olsen is an inspiring artist, made in equal parts of wit and grit. There were several aspects to Olsen’s art that separated it from the balance of Australian landscape painting. Although in the 1950s he was flirting with earthy abstraction inspired by the likes of Graham Sutherland – with more than a hint of the late Catalan painter, Antoni Tapies – Olsen suddenly found his own visual idiom in the early 1960s. Since then, he has pursued a unique, personal and consistent style – almost to a fault. That is not to say that his paintings are the fruit of stale formulas or hackneyed processes. His art is more akin to the art of freestyle cooking – like the cooking of a paella, if we are to use one the dishes he is famous for cooking his guests. Like the greatest chefs in the world – to continue the metaphor – he would not follow recipes or measure every ingredient precisely. Rather, he is dictated by experience, a gut feeling of what’s needed and a refined taste for fine aesthetic judgement. But like every master chef, he had to complete his apprenticeship to learn from the old guard. He attributes this ability to select and match the right ‘ingredients’ to his art education. ‘It not only teaches you about what to put in, but also, importantly, it teaches you what to leave out’, he once said. 2 Although one can imagine Olsen absorbed a great deal of technical and theoretical knowledge from the classes of Datillo Rubbo Art School, and later with John Passmore and Godfrey Miller, there is a sense that they only acted as catalysts for his artistic flowering than progenitors of his style or technique. For John Olsen, a great deal of inspirational sustenance was drawn from experiencing firsthand the natural vastness and complexity of the Australian outback. His appetite for a nomadic way of life, in search of new visual material, has taken him around Australia and the world. In 1981, it landed him in Wagga Wagga, a town boarded to the north by the meandering Murrumbidgee River. In Owls over the Murrumbidgee, 1981, Olsen show us a birds-eye view of the live; the source that draws a rich variety of animals to its thirst quenching waters. In his idiosyncratic calligraphic style, the staring owls, jumping frogs and kookaburras swarm over the thinly painted waterway and its banks. Human presence is hinted at with a noticeable face (perhaps a self-portrait) emerging from the twisted squiggles that characterise the left bank. In describing the various visitors to Murrumbidgee, Olsen reveals its essence and spirit. Meditating over his paintings, one gets a sense that Olsen paints what he hears, smells, smells and feels, just as much as what he sees. There is a justified impression that the artist has been here a long while and knows his subjects well. In discussing works from the early 1980s, Deborah Hart has observed how they, ‘present the landscape as a living, pulsing organism suggestive of animalistic shapes and biological forms; of landscape not as a static factor but as a process, not only seen but felt.’3 The present work was show in 1981 in a join show in Wagga Wagga with artist, and then wife, Neol Hjorth. The work has remained in the one collection since it was purchased in that exhibition. Petrit Abazi 1 The first stanza in Thomas Shapcott’s poem Parken Pregan Lagoon, written for and in response to John Olsen’s paintings of 1981 in Wagga Wagga. 2 Cited in David Hurlston (ed.), John Olsen: the You Beaut country, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2016, p. 4; 3 Deborah Hart, John Olsen, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1991, p. 153
• Estimate:
  A$140,000 - 200,000
• 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.