Self-portrait 1955
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Helen Brack 2009 Australia
John Brack. Australia 1920–1999. oil on canvas. 81.5 x 48.3 cm. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Purchased with the assistance of the National Gallery Women’s Association, 2000
John Brack
Art Gallery of South Australia
Friday 02 October 2009 to Tuesday 26 January 2010
More than any other artist of his generation, John Brack (1920-99) was a painter of modern Australian life. Unlike his contemporaries, Brack painted neither myth nor history and when he focused on the landscape, it was the sprawl of suburbia that caught his attention rather than the ubiquitous Australian bush.
Brack has long been considered the quintessential Melbourne artist, a reputation which rests in no small part on the renown of his painting, Collins St, 5pm, 1955. Today it seems more appropriate to view him as a distinctively Australian artist who, with a penetrating gaze and keen sense of irony, documented aspects of contemporary life in what have become some of the most iconic images of twentieth-century Australian art. More than depictions of familiar subjects however, Brack’s paintings are cerebral exercises which slowly reveal references to sources as diverse as the history of art and literature within complex layers of meaning.
This major retrospective, the first in more than twenty years, will survey John Brack’s complete œuvre, incorporating paintings and works on paper from all of his major series.
