Vida Lahey: colour and modernism

LEft Art and nature 1934 cencil or cardboard 52.5 a 60.6cm 4 Oft of the Queensland Art Fund 1950 in memory of Miss Madge Roe (18911938) Collection: Queensland Art Gallery tBELOW The cretonne curtain a ' t var pencil on wove paper ( on ca'do aid 49.5 x 40cm Oft of Ann Gruen in Uff memory of her mother, Margaret Dame 11970 C ' a ton Qi,jpensland Art Gpllp,,v Af ' ti Colour experimentation Lot W WOS aware of Roy he Maistre and Roland 0 y it g fret o, the sculptor Daphne May a' Wakelin's experiments in colour, having exhibited the draped white tablecloth. Art and nature alongside them in the first Contemporary Group simultaneously registers the primacy of nature, exhibition at Sydney's Grosvenor Galleries in acknowledges the classical tradition and 1926. Further, she recommended colour theorist recognises Modernism, Henri Matisse, one H Barret Carpenter's Suggestions for the Study of the major figures in modern French art, used o f Co/our (191 b) to her own students. The startling colour as an expressive element rather than to intensity of Labey's watercolours is somewhat at depict natural objects: his name features on a variance with the colour exercises in Carpenter's book in Lahey's representational work, indicating Although her palette was at its most vivid during text, but there are clear connections between her the more conservative cast of Modernism in the experimental 1930s, Vida Lahey continued work and his recommendations for achieving the Queensland. to produce muted, but equally charming, effect of shadows, 'without loss of brilliance by watercolours for the remainder of her career, using c c ours in their natural order'. In Ca/endu/as Vida Lahey was liberal in her attitudes and including Noonday shadows 1946 and Flower c,1936-37, for example, Lahey uses the increased opinions - particularly on art education, as study (Anzac dais/es, pyrethrum, jasmine and intensity of orange to suggest a shadow on the expressed in her pamphlet 'Art for Al' - but not blue torenta) 1965. She also made works with yellow tower, in her practice. She could not accept distortion extraordinary co our values such as the murky n art, be it the cubists' manipulation of form or purplish brown of Dutchman's pipe 1950. She Modernism in Queensland the surrealists' mental projections, seeing these achieved a position of national significance during as reflecting the unsettled conditions of the Great the 1930s but her studies, and floral sti I lifes as Vida Laheys Art and nature 1934 - imposing Depression. She once remarked: a genre, were overwhelmed by the developments in scale while less chromatically advanced than of Expressionism and Abstraction post World her other watercolours - was her 'manifesto' . . f you do not like the ugliness of modern art, and its War Two. Lahey's work became less familiar on Modernism in Queensland. Its subject matter restlessness, then give the artist a serene and beautiful to Australian audiences, but the verve of her reflects a debate about traditional and modern world in which to live, and art will soon reflect it. technique and brilliant palette place her alongside art that occurred between March and May 1933 the important female artists of her generation. in a series of letters to the Courier-Mail. The eye Lahey's response to the times was to enhance immediately focuses on the intense orange the beauty and vibrancy of nature in her floral Glenn R Cooke flowers before exploring the quieter tones of the studies, counteracting the negative aspects Research Curator, Queensland Heritage book; the buff, classically inspired relief by her of the contemporary world.