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Master of Stillness illuminates the vision of the most celebrated of Australian expatriate artists, from his beginnings in Adelaide until his last major composition painted in Italy, where he lived for five decades until his death in 2013.
Adelaide, where Jeffrey Smart was born in 1921, was where his essential evolution as an artist took shape. His early fascination for its grid-like urban landscape was a perfect basis for an ongoing celebration of the phenomena of highways, traffic signs, trucks, transmitters and brutish modular architecture in post-war Europe; aspects of the modern world others found ugly but which he declared beautiful.
Jeffrey Smart's vision curiously searches for an elusive stillness in the midst of industrial change, and this can be seen and appreciated here with a selection of many of his most important masterpieces.
Author: Barry Pearce
Hardback Published 2021 152 pages
'It is fascinating to trace the development of the artist's discovery of beauty in lines, textures and shapes, from the early examples of still life, to the buildings and fences, roads and bridges, leading to his last and ultimate work 'Labyrinth', with the portrait of H.G. Wells, a small figure placed in the maze of straight stone walls with shadows making triangles amid the rectangular shapes ... A wonderful celebration of a great Australian artist - it is a book to treasure, and deserves a place in the art section of every library.' - Helen Eddy, ReadPlus