Grace Cossington Smith ...A Retrospective

Saturday, 13 August 2005 13:19

ADELAIDE, SOUTH AUSTRALIA.-The Art Gallery of South Australia presents Grace Cossington Smith, A Retrospective Exhibition. For the first time in three decades, the work of one of Australia’s pioneers of modernism, Grace Cossington Smith, will be shown in a vibrant new national travelling exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia. Featuring 90 paintings and drawings and 24 rarely seen sketchbooks complete with handwritten notes, this major retrospective exhibition reaffirms Grace Cossington Smith’s central position in Australian art of the 20th century. It provides an opportunity for a new generation of Australians to view and appreciate the dazzling colours and dramatic use of space in her work. Fresh from the National Gallery of Australia, this national touring exhibition of works drawn from public and private collections around Australia, traces Cossington Smith’s artistic development and reveals an artist of considerable depth, insight and spirituality. The exhibition, which is the largest and most comprehensive of the artist’s work ever staged, leads the visitor on a visual journey through her life; from early student works, to images of wartime Sydney; from her eyewitness account of the Sydney Harbour Bridge construction, to portraits of family and friends, still-life subjects, landscapes and above all, her radiant, lightfilled interiors. Grace Cossington Smith’s career commenced in 1910 when she attended drawing classes and later studied oil painting at Anthony Dattilo-Rubbo’s famous atelier in Sydney. Her teacher referred to her affectionately as ‘Mrs Van Gogh’, due to the vitality and infusion of colour and light in her work. Today, she is renowned as a brilliant colourist and vivid paintings of her bedroom and family home of ‘Cossington’ are among the artist’s most beloved works. When Thomas visited the artist at ‘Cossington’, he discovered many wonderful paintings hidden away in cupboards. Many of these are now recognised as important in Australian modernism and are included in this retrospective. Throughout her 92 years, Grace Cossington Smith managed many notable achievements including being elected to full membership of the Society of Artists in Sydney. She was awarded an Order of the British Empire for services to art in 1973 and the Order of Australia in 1978. She died in 1984, unaware of the huge interest in her work that would soon follow.

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