Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

'BUILT ON EACH OTHER' Grace Crowley and Ralph Balsón Candice Bruce Facing page Grace Crowley Australia 1890-1979 Abstract 1951 Oil on cardboard 69x91cm Purchased 1995 Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Right Ralph Balsón Australia 1890-1964 Portrait of Grace Crowley 1939 Oil on canvas on cardboard 108.8x64.3 cm The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney Far right Grace Crowley The Artist and His Model 1938 Oil on composition board 86x54cm Gift of the artist 1975 The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney n 1966 oral historian Hazel de Berg asked Grace Crowley to talk about her friend and colleague Ralph Balsón. Crowley spoke of her surprise and envy at the ease with which Balsón painted his first abstract works: 'Balsón I believe to have been born an abstract painter. He was born that way, while I had to be educated that way'.1Although they had known each other in the 1920s, when Crowley was the teacher and Balsón a pupil at the weekend sketch classes at Julian Ashtons Sydney Art School, it was not until many years later that they would develop a deep and abiding friendship.2Balsón inspired Crowley, though, ultimately, it was his career that benefited the most. 'You built on each other', comments Hazel de Berg in the interview. 'Yes, that's right, we built on each other', agreed Crowley. In 1926, with her friend Anne Dangar, Grace Crowley went to France where for almost five years she studied with two of the best teachers of the day, André Lhote and Albert Gleizes. As early members of the cubist movement, both Lhote and Gleizes had exhibited with the Section d'Or group in Paris in 1912 but had, by the late 1920s, shifted from their original theoretical and aesthetic positions. Lhote was especially important to Crowley's artistic development. She attended his academy in Montparnasse and later, between 1927 and 1929, visited his summer school at Mirmande with Dangar and Dorrit Black.3 I saw for the first time the force that a drawing gained by being simplified into geometric shapes. I learned for the first time about dynamic symmetry. It was a revelation to find that in the Louvre the paintings I'd admired were constructed on a geometrical basis .4 224 BROUGHT TO LIGHT: Australian Art 1850-1965