Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

Above Ralph Balsón Untitled 1961 Oil on composition board 67.5X90.2cm Purchased 1978 Queensland Art Gallery Facing page Ralph Balsón Australia 1890-1964 Constructive painting 1947 Oil on composition board 69.5X90.7cm Purchased 1984 Queensland Art Gallery All persisted with abstraction, although with separate and individual distinctions. In 1941 Balsón produced an exhibition of purely abstract works, entitled 'Constructive Paintings', drawn from his study of Piet Mondrian.17The purity of Mondrian's Neo- Plasticism and his belief in fundamental order initially had great appeal for Balsón. His early 1940s works carry a hard-edged simplicity which, as art historian Mary Eagle has identified, was a foretaste of the Minimalism of the late 1960s and early 1970s.18Mondrian, he later admitted, was the 'single greatest influence' on his work.19 Mondrian's search for universal truth (sometimes through theosophy) appealed to Balson's own philosophical and spiritual needs, though, as Bruce Adams has noted, 'Balson's geometric art was never as cool and elemental as Mondrian's'.20By the mid- 1940s, particularly the period immediately following the development of the atom bomb, Balsón came to reject the view of the universe as rigid and harmonious, in favour of a much more complex and organic belief system. The idea of an orderly universe seemed impossible to sustain in light of scientific developments such as nuclear fission and Einstein's Theory of Relativity, and this led Balsón to take a totally new direction in his art. While Balson's earlier work in the 1940s made much use of the circle as a definitive shape and circular motion as a compositional device, in Constructive painting 1947 (QAG) squares and rectangles seem to 'float' randomly across the canvas, shifting above, below and behind one another. These 'patterns of great complexity', as painter and critic James Gleeson described them, signified the direction that both Balsón and Crowley would take over the next few years and would seem to be (at least in Crowley's art) the painterly evidence of Hambidge's 'rectangle of the whirling square'. Both Crowley and Balsón, according to Frank Hinder, had long been experimenting with coloured papers to achieve this effect and by the early 1950s both were painting abstract compositions of overlapping geometric blocks of tonal colour, though Balsón stuck more rigidly to a formal grid than Crowley.21Colour, too, is reduced (though not as reductive as some that followed in the early 1950s), with bands of barely distinguishable blue backgrounding pale pink, grey and yellow. As with Crowley's painting, the creamy texture of the paint itself has been allowed expression — indeed Balson's enjoyment of the physicality of the medium is palpable. Balson's influence on Crowley's art is best demonstrated by her 1950s abstracts. In her Abstract 1951 (QAG), for example, the sky blue and hot pinks serve as a background to a humming mix of egg yolk yellow and bright orange, while the 'rectangle of the whirling square' spins across the canvas from right to left. Shapes and colours collide and float so that all sense of perspective is lost. Paint has been applied thickly, the brush dragging at the oil to create a deeply grooved effect. Crowley's painting has an easy fluidity not present in either Balson's or Frank Hinders work. This relaxation of form probably resulted from Crowley combining Hambidge's theories with those of Lhote and Gleizes, whereas Balsón drew many of his influences from Mondrian and contemporary French painting, and later, American Abstract Expressionism (towards which he would increasingly lean)22 Crowley and Balsón remained painting partners and the best of friends until Balson's death in 1964. They painted together at her cottage in Mittagong, and met up in Fondon and Paris in 1960 where they worked and visited galleries. A combination of self-deprecation and low self-confidence conspired to limit the number of surviving paintings by Crowley. She destroyed many of her own works when she closed her studio in George Street, stating matter-of-factly that 'even the most famous artists do bad work', and she was clearly uncomfortable with interviewers in speaking of her own art and her role in developing abstraction in mid-twentieth-century Sydney.23Balsón, on the other hand, enjoyed more success as time wore on, holding a total of eight solo exhibitions and many group exhibitions until his death in 1964. Their deep friendship was easier to sustain than their collaborative success. Throughout their long partnership, Crowley loved to watch Balsón paint. 'People thought him rather morose, and he wasn't... he was the happiest thing you could think of.'24 Dr Candice Bruce is the former Curator, Australian Art at the Queensland Art Gallery 1993-95 and Is now an independent curator and consultant In Sydney. 228 BROUGHT TO LIGHT: Australian Ait 1850-1965