This important new book looks at one of the most distinctive periods in the history of Australian art, bracketed between the two world wars from 1915 into the 1940s. The Sydney moderns were progressive artists at the forefront of the development of modernism in Australia. They produced exuberant, cosmopolitan paintings, prints, sculptures, designs and applied arts in response to and as part of the changing modern world and the international modernist movement.
With the rise of the new city, artists explored and promoted modernity through the revolutions in colour and light which accompanied European modernism, and advanced the forms of abstraction. These artists presented the modern metropolis and the dynamic patterns of modern living under Sydney's light-filled skies or in coloured interiors as new realms of visual experience.
Artists include Ralph Balson, Dorrit Black, Harold Cazneaux, Grace Cossington Smith, Olive Cotton, Roy de Maistre, Max Dupain, Adrian Feint, Rah Fizelle, Frank Hinder, Margel Hinder, Margaret Preston, Thea Proctor and Roland Wakelin, amongst many others.
Sydney moderns illustrates some 300 works of art from the Gallery's collection as well as other public and private collections, supported by diverse pictorial material. In addition to paintings, prints and sculpture, it includes design and fashion, integral to the modernist project.
There are five major essays by Deborah Edwards, Denise Mimmocchi and Terence Maloon and 35 focus essays by a diverse range of specialist writers which spotlight key artists, groups and events (author list on following page). A must for anyone interested in Australian art, modernism and modernity.
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