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Home , Blue Poles, Catherine Helen Spence, Claude Flight, Dorrit Black, Ethel Spowers, Gallery A

This timeline includes critical events in the development of abstraction, the contribution that women have made to its growth and expression, and key moments of socio-political history occurring concurrently with its evolution as a dominant tendency in the of the twentieth century.

1844 In , Joseph Mallord William Turner 1895–99 paints Rain, Steam and Speed. Paul Cézanne paints a series of proto cubist landscapes considered to be a bridge between 1875 and at Bibémus Quarry, American artist James Abbott McNeill Aix-en-Provence. Whistler paints Nocturne in Black and Gold – http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=251113 the falling rocket. 1897 1885 In South , Catherine Helen Spence Georges Seurat paints Le Bec du Hoc, becomes the first woman in the world to stand Grandcamp, now in the Gallery, for election. . The study was acquired by the NGA in 1984. The artist employs a scientific 1900 basis for this series known as , proclaims the Declaration of where he juxtaposes small brushstrokes of the Commonwealth of Australia to take effect colour to create light and shade to form the on 1 January 1901. composition. http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=92051 1901 Australia becomes an independent nation. 1877 Federation of Australia occurs and the French Impressionist artist Claude Monet Australian Federal Parliament opens in paints La Gare Saint-Lazare. , the temporary capital.

1883 Author and feminist Stella Maria Miles In England, married women obtain the right to Franklin, also known as , acquire their own property. publishes My Brilliant Career.

1883 The Immigration Restriction Act is passed, Paul Gaugin paints The vision after the sermon. leading to the ‘White Australia Policy’ kept in He employs flat, coloured planes where place for the next 60 years. composition, shape and colour take on an independant value; a dream sequence, the 1902 subject goes beyond the depiction of observed The Commonwealth Franchise Act becomes reality. For Gaugin, art is more about ‘the idea’, law declaring that women could vote in and members in his circle increasingly dissect all Commonwealth elections. Indigenous the new art as having inherent ‘musical’ Australians and people of Asian, African and qualities, another step on the road Pacific nationality were excluded. Australian to abstraction. women (other than those excluded on racial grounds) were given the vote in South 1891 Australia (and thus the Northern Territory) and The Women’s Christian Temperance Union is Western Australia. Those in , established in Melbourne. This highly active Tasmania, Queensland, and Victoria achieved union campaigned for women’s suffrage. the right to vote in the federal election on 16 December 1903 under this act. These 1894 women finally won the right to vote in their South Australian women are granted voting state elections in 1902, 1903, 1905 and 1908 rights and the right to stand for Parliament. respectively. Both of these rights established together were a world first.

1 1904 the avant-garde artists in Paris, contributing Rose Macpherson (later known as Margaret to the advent of Cubism. Preston) and Bessie Davidson move to Paris where they remain until 1906. During this Pablo Picasso paints Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, period, they study at the Académie which is not publicly shown until 1916. It is La Grande Chaumière in Montparnasse. revolutionary on many fronts but, in terms of http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=24997 the development of abstraction, it marks an important moment in both the abandonment 1905 of illusionistic space and perspective and the Henri Matisse exhibits a revolutionary anarchic depiction of the female form reduced landscape, Luxe, Calme et Volupté 1904 at the to disjointed angles and shapes painted in a Salon des Indépendents in Paris. Painted in minimal palette. The profound influence of pure primary colours, its very title suggests African and Oceanic art, which Picasso had that it is about ideas and sensation, as much seen in museums, is first made explicit in as the figure in the landscape. It is also a this work. about painting, not simply a painting of a scene. French inventor Louis Lumière develops a process for colour photography using a At the Salon d’Automne, Henri Matisse, three-color screen. The process proves to be André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck cause adaptable to the industrial production of a sensation when they exhibit brightly coloured images and is one of the few available for referred to by journalist Louis nearly thirty years. With his brother Auguste Vauxcelles as les fauves, or ‘wild beasts’, thus Lumière, Louis is also credited with having coining the term . invented the motion picture. and Bessie Davidson visit the controversial exhibition having already seen the van Gogh 1908 retrospective in Paris in March. Georges Braque paints Houses at l’Estaque http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail. depicting the scene in an arrangement of cfm?IRN=98696&PICTAUS=True ‘bizarre cubiques’, as described by influential French art critic Louis Vauxcelles. Braque 1906 submits works to the Salon d’Automne in Paris Margaret Preston and Bessie Davidson visit where they are rejected, but he is adopted the Gauguin retrospective at the Salon by the art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, d’Automne. This exhibition has a decisive who shows the work in his gallery near the influence on Preston’s future directions. Madeleine. Vauxcelles reviews the exhibition http://cs.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=54550 describing the works as ‘full of little cubes’, thus the term Cubism is coined. In Sweden, Hilma af Klint begins work on a major cycle of abstract painting comprising Filippo Marinetti writes Manifesto del Futurismo 193 works titled The Paintings for the Temple. – a rejection of the past embracing youth, Deeply concerned with the spiritual dimension, industry and the velocity of the machine age. she believed they were ‘commissioned’ during séances held by a spiritualist group of women Core of my Heart, later known as My Country, named ‘the Five’, of which she was a member. by Dorothea Mackellar, is first published in Although unseen by the art world until 1986, The Spectator, London, on 5 September. It is they are now believed to be among the first reprinted in numerous Australian newspapers wholly abstract works of art to be produced in turning her into one of Australia’s most well- Western art. known poets.

The Australian silent film The story of the Site for Canberra is selected for the capital Kelly Gang was released in Australia (1908 in of Australia. England). It is the world’s first feature length film. 1909 Manifesto del Futurismo is published in Gazetta 1907 dell’Emilia, Bologna and Le Figaro, Paris, and Retrospective of the work of Paul Cézanne at immediately becoes influential in modernist the Salon d’Automne in Paris greatly influences circles.

2 1910 Poet Guillaume Apollinaire coins the word Sonia Delaunay, along with Kazimir Malevich to describe the trajectory of cubism and Alexander Archipenko, exhibit at the Salon that appeared as pure abstraction painted des Indépendants. in bright colours. Apollinaire believed that the style was close to music in its commitment Wassily Kandinsky paints Untitled (First to anti-figuration. Orphism’s main exponents Abstract Watercolor). were François Kupka and Roger and Sonia Delaunay and it is regarded as the key 1911 transition from cubism to abstraction. Salon des Indépendants includes a room Derived from the Classical Greek figure of dedicated to Cubism, Salle 41, with work Orpheus, the name has mystic connotations. by Robert Delaunay, , Jean http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail. Metzinger and Fernand Léger. cfm?IRN=97876&PICTAUS=TRUE

La Pittura futurista, manifesto tecnico is Margaret Preston commences her second signed by Carlo Carrà, , Luigi visit to England and Europe on 8 February, Russolo, and . returning initially to Paris and then settling http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=162456 in England. She carefully studied Cézanne and returned to the work of Gauguin before Wassily Kandinsky publishes Concerning the discovering the Japanese tradition of ukiyo-e spiritual in art, in Munich. He also forms Der printing. In London she was influenced by Blaue Reiter with Franz Marc, a loose knit Whistler and became increasingly drawn to group of artists exhibiting regularly in Munich the modernist theories of Roger Fry and the who are interested in free experimentation Bloomsbury set. She came into close contact and expression. Brightly coloured, the works with the quasi-scientific theories circulating at present a lyrical form of abstraction that tap a the time about colour-music synchromy. She spiritual dimension. These early exhibitions are brought back these progressive theories upon considered as laying a foundation from which her return to Australia with fiancé, William abstraction evolved. Preston, in 1919, extolling them in her numerous http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=1958 published essays about the need for a new modern national art form. 1912 Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger publish 1913 Du Cubisme and establish La Section d’Or, Guillaume Apollinaire publishes Les Peintres a collective of artists, poets and critics Cubistes, in Paris. associated with Cubism and Orphism who are concerned with the intellectual underpinning of Marcel Duchamp exhibits his first ‘ready-made’ cubism and the ascendency of the ‘idea’ over Roue de bicyclette (Bicycle wheel), ‘nature’. They subscribed to a pure abstraction now lost. based on a geometric cubism determined by http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail. the mathematical theory behind the notion of cfm?IRN=49305&PICTAUS=TRUE the golden section. http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=110534 returns to after studying in Europe, bringing with her a Marcel Duchamp submits his futuristic Nude collection of art books and reproductions descending a staircase to the Salon des of modernist works. This material is highly Indépendants, but it proved to be too radical influential on several of her students, including even for the avant-garde and it was rejected, , and despite his brothers being on the selection . committee. architect Walter Burley Griffin wins October, exhibition of the Salon de la Section the competition to design the city of Canberra d’Or. Duchamp’s Nude descending a staircase with his wife Marion Mahony Griffin, also an is shown here and illustrated in Albert Gleizes’ architect. She collaborated with him on the and Jean Metzinger’s groundbreaking design competition entry, and is known to have publication Du Cubisme. prepared the design drawings. http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=243689

3 1914 Harmonising Disc, which he patented in 1924 Wyndham Lewis founds British avant-garde and sold through Grace Brothers, Sydney. group, Vorticists, who are interested in expressing http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=102178 the dynamism and velocity of the modern world. Launches the magazine Blast in which he wrote, The First World War ends with over nine million ‘The New Vortex plunges to the heart of the combatants and seven million civilians dying Present – we produce a New Living Abstraction’. as a direct result of the war. A total of 61,720 Australians died and 153,509 were wounded. In The Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria is 1914 the Australian population was 4,940,952, assassinated. Austria declares war on Serbia. with 161,910 more men than women. Due to treaty obligations, Britain, France, Russia and other countries are suddenly Influenza epidemic kills approximately brought into war with Germany, Austria and 12,000 Australians and continues into the their allies. Britain declares war on Germany. following year. First World War begins. Australia is again at war for the British Empire. 1919 Walter Gropius founds the school of 1915 art and design in Weimar. Kazimir Malevich publishes From Cubism to Supremetism: The New Painterly . He moves to Paris in 1918 and then exhibits the revolutionary Black square begins to paint his first grid-based paintings in the The Last Exhibition of Futurist Painting at the end of 1919. He then turns the canvas 90 0.10 in Petrograd in December. The show also degrees and produces his first lozenge works, contained Stroyuschiysya dom [House under such as Composition in Black and Gray construction] of 1915–16, now in the collection Composition with Grid 4 (Lozenge) 1919 of the NGA. Many of the abstract artists in (Philadelphia Museum of Art). Russia regarded themselves as Constructivists. http://nga.gov.au/International/Catalogue/Detail. Roy de Maistre and Roland Wakelin exhibit a cfm?IRN=36797 group of works in their Colour in Art exhibition. De Maistre paints Rhythmic composition in 1917 yellow green minor (AGNSW) and Arrested The Dutch collective (The Style), phrase from Hayden Trio in orange-red minor otherwise known as neo-plasticism, is founded and Arrested phrase from Beethoven’s Ninth in Amsterdam. Key members of the group are Symphony in red major (NGA), perfectly Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian. In both illustrating his colour harmonisation theory. architecture and painting, they advocated a http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=102178 simple linear abstraction of primary colours. Mondrian publishes ‘De Nieuwe Beelding in de 1920 schilderkunst’ (‘The New Plastic in Painting’) in ‘Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial twelve instalments during 1917 and 1918. Services’, now known as Qantas, is founded.

February, Bourgeois Democratic Revolution 1921 occurs in Petrograd, Russia forcing the 5 x 5 = 25 exhibition opens in Moscow including abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, marking the end Alexander Rodchenko’s deconstructed triptych, of the Romanov dynasty. This is followed by Red, Yellow and Blue before he abandons the far more radical Boshevik Revolution (Red painting to focus on graphic production for the October), which saw the overthrow of the Revolution. His pioneering experimental inquiry Provisional Government, all of which paved into the elements of pictorial and sculptural the way for the political and social arrival art produced purely abstract artworks that of Marxist/Leninist Communism and the separate out the components of each image — establishment of the Soviet Union. line, form, space, color, surface, texture and the work’s physical support. 1918 Roy de Maistre begins experimenting with colour-music theory based on the relationship between colours of the spectrum and notes of the musical scale. He later produced a Colour

4 1921 1928 Anthony Hordern’s Fine Art Gallery shows Crowley, Dangar and Black all attend Exhibition of Paintings in Oil and Water Colours André Lhote’s summer school in Mirmande. and Drawings in by Eleven Australian Women in which exhibits The Great Depression hits Australia. 10 paintings alongside her friends Grace http://nga.gov.au/crowley/details/133752.cfm Crowley and Ann Dangar. The three friends later travel to Europe where they become 1929 immersed in modernist practices, which they Michel Seuphor and Joaquin Torres Garcia transfer to Australia upon their return. founded Cercle et Carré (Circle and Square) in Paris dedicated entirely to abstraction 1923 and concerned with its capacity to tap the Construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge mystical realms. The group was absorbed into begins. This new structure introduces a Abstraction-Création in 1933. strikingly modern statement to the skyline of Sydney. Crowley and Black continue their studies with André Lhote in Paris. Crowley has two 1924 paintings accepted by the Salon des Artistes André Breton publishes Manifeste du Français Indépendants, Paris. Both Crowley surréalisme. and Black take lessons from Albert Gleizes in his Paris studio and then join his artist colony 1925 at Moly-Sabata, Sablons, France in October. founds the Grosvenor School http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail. of , Pimlico, London, which he cfm?IRN=72419&PICTAUS=TRUE runs with . It was the most progressive school of modern art in London at Grace Cossington Smith creates The bridge the time and pioneered linocut printmaking in building painted from her favourite viewing techniques. , and position at Milson’s Point, Sydney. Dorrit Black all study there and revolutionise http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=131114 printmaking in Australia as a consequence. 1930 1926 Dorrit Black and return to Grace Crowley and leave Sydney. Anne Dangar departs Sydney in Australia for France on board the Ville de February for Albert Gleizes’ artist colony Strasbourg and in March they visit Cézanne’s Moly-Sabata in central France in the Rhône studio in Aix-en-Provence. valley, where she remains until her death in 1951. Dorrit Black’s friend, Nancy Hall, publishes her first edition of the progressive magazine Dorrit Black has a large exhibition of French Undergrowth (1926–29). The magazine and Australian works at Macqaurie Galleries published news from abroad including Grace on 10 September 1930 with Provençale Crowley’s ‘Letters from France’ and Anne Farmhouse included in this exhibition. A Dangar’s visit to Cezanne’s studio in Aix-en- modernist group of artists loosely forms called Provence. the ‘Group of Seven’ including Grace Crowley, Dorrit Black, Grace Cossington Smith, Enid The owners of Café de l’ Aubette, Strasbourg Cambridge, Roy de Maistre, Roland Wakelin commission Sophie Taeuber-Arp to design the and Frank Weitzel. They hold their first interior decoration. exhibition at Macquarie Galleries on 6 March http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=116207 1930. http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=116207 1927 Dorrit Black sets sail for Europe aboard Theo van Doesburg publishes Manifesto of the SS Comorin arriving in London on Concrete Art in the first and only issue of 27 September 1927. She immediately joins the his magazine, Art Concret. In the concise Grosvenor School of Modern Art in Pimlico, document, he states, ‘the painting must be studying with Claude Flight and Iain Macnab. entirely built up with purely plastic elements, http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=264252 namely surfaces and colours. A pictorial

5 element does not have any meaning beyond famous cover presents a diagram explaining “itself”; as a consequence, a painting does the evolution of Cubism and abstraction. not have any meaning other than “itself”’. Concrete art may be thought of as an extreme American Abstract Artists (AAA) group is form of that is entirely free of established in New York to encourage interest any basis in observed reality and that has no in abstraction and opportunities for artists symbolic meaning. to exhibit non-representational work to an otherwise hostile public. 1931 Australian expatriate artist John Wardell 1937 Power is a founding member of the Fabric designer Frances Burke founds Abstraction-Création group in Paris, bringing Australia’s first textile screen-printing business, together both geometric abstract artists Burway Prints, in Melbourne. alongside those practising a more organic or biomorphic form of abstraction. The group 1939 establish a gallery space and a publication The Herald Exhibition of French and British (1932–36), which artists such as Albert Gleizes, is held at the Art Gallery the Delaunays, Piet Mondrian, Barbara of , Melbourne Town Hall Hepworth and Brancusi contributed to, among and David Jones Gallery, Sydney. The highly many others. influential show included works by Cézanne, Bonnard, Braque, de Chirico, Dali, Gauguin In March Dorrit Black unofficially opens her and van Gogh, among many others. Of the 215 Modern Art Centre at 56 Margaret Street, works, only five women artists were included. Sydney, which runs for three years hosting a The catalogue announced that, ‘This exhibition sketch club and exhibitions. It was probably is designed to give Australian people an the first Australian organisation to use opportunity – their first opportunity – of direct the word ‘modern’ in its title and Dorrit Black contact with the work of those great masters was the first woman to run an art gallery in whose discoveries are so profoundly influencing Australia. the artistic expression of our time’.

1932 At the instigation of German émigré artist Sydney-born doctor John Wardell Power, who Eleonore Lange, Exhibition 1 is held at the adopted painting after the First World War David Jones Gallery, Sydney in August 1939 with studios in Brussels, Bournemouth and and includes the work of , Grace Paris, publishes Eléments de la construction Crowley, Rah Fizelle, and Margel picturale, in Paris. Hinder. The exhibition is organised around Lange’s theory of abstract art, which is also 16 March – Dorrit Black’s Modern Art Centre in explained in the exhibition’s catalogue essay. Margaret Street Sydney is officially opened. http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=36454 19 March – Sydney Harbour Bridge is officially http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=41703 opened. 1 September – German Invasion of Poland and Grace Crowley and Rah Fizelle establish the the commencement of the Second World War. Crowley-Fizelle school, which becomes the Australia goes to war again as a part of Great principal centre for modernist painting and art Britain’s forces. theory in Sydney until its closure in 1937. 1940 1935 May – June, Fall of Paris to Nazi occupation. British art critic and librettist Myfanwy Evans Many European artists leave Paris and make founds Axis, a periodical devoted to abstract art. their way to New York. American art collector and gallerist Peggy Guggenheim assists a 1936 number of European modern artists to escape Alfred H Barr Jr, founding director of the to New York as well as rescuing many modern in New York, publishes masterpieces from the Nazis. Cubism and Abstract Art. The catalogue accompanied the exhibition of the same name, held from 2 March to 9 April. The book’s

6 1941 1944 Ralph Balson holds a solo exhibition at Anthony Constructive Paintings is held at Macquarie Hordern Gallery in Sydney, which is credited Galleries, Sydney in May. The exhibitors, Grace as being the first entirely abstract painting Crowley, Frank Hinder, Gerald Ryan and Ralph exhibition in Australia, comprising work that is Balson, all show non-objective paintings. A non-figurative and non-representational. similar exhibition is shown at David Jones http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=200120 Gallery, Sydney in 1948. http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=41705 1942 Jean Arp writes his manifesto Art Concret, 1945 published in the catalogue to Peggy Pollock moves to the Springs, East Hampton Guggenheim’s exhibition Art of This Century: with his new wife, painter , by Objects – Drawings – Photographs – Paintings whom the NGA has nine works. He begins – Sculpture – Collage 1910 to 1942, at her gallery to paint on canvas laid on the floor, creating ‘The Art of This Century’. It is later reproduced what became regarded as ‘drip paintings’, or in the catalogue for the first international ‘action paintings’. These works contained no exhibition of concrete art in Basle in 1944. He negative or positive space and line was totally argues that concrete art ‘doesn’t have the freed from its traditional task of representing slightest trace of abstraction’ and that it is an objects or movement. art constructed of lines, surfaces, forms and colours and not abstractions of a concept. 14 August – Armistice and VE Day. 2 September – formal surrender of Japan. 1943 Both dates accepted as the close of the is signed to Peggy Second World War. Guggenheim’s The Art of This Century Gallery http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=29510 (1942–47), New York. She commissions him http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=45694 to paint , which her adviser Marcel Duchamp recommends to be painted on 1947 canvas. Clement Greenberg views the work American painter Clyfford Still begins to paint and declares Pollock the greatest living large-scale works of few colours applied with American-born painter. the palette knife, forming the basis of Colour Field painting, which emerged out of Abstract Mary Alice Evatt is appointed to the board of . the Art Gallery of New South Wales in March http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=101773 1943, becoming the first woman trustee of an Australian state gallery. Evatt learned painting 1948 from her friend, Grace Crowley, and in the Barnett Newman begins his Onement series early 1930s was affiliated with the Sydney and the Zip paintings, which were composed modernist circle. Evatt served as a gallery of a simple colour plane organised by the trustee until 1970 and is viewed as a champion inclusion of a zip line. of modern Australian painting. An exhibition of Australian designers is curated Darwin is bombed with 243 people killed. by Marion Hall Best in her new position as Australian soldiers and conflict between with director of the David Jones Art Gallery, Sydney. the Japanese Imperial Forces on the Kokoda Track begins. At this time there are 3000 Frances Burke co-founds Australia’s first Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men professional design organisation, the Society enlisted for service. of Designers for Industry in Melbourne (Industrial Design Council of Australia from The ‘Directorate of Manpower’ in Australia 1956). declares women can now be employed in factories, commerce, transport and the public Burke becomes a founding member of the service. Museum of Modern Art’s governing council (later the Museum of Modern Art at Heide). Dorothy Tangney from Western Australia http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=85454 becomes the first woman elected to the Australian Parliament.

7 1949 1955 The Snowy Mountain Hydro-Electric Scheme Audette moves to Florence, Italy, where she commences. becomes increasingly interested in Concrete Art (Arte Concreta). 1950 The Commonwealth Basic Wage inquiry 1956 concludes that women should receive only The one millionth ‘New Australian’, Barbara 75% of the male minimum wage. Porritt, is welcomed to Australia.

1951 The Olympics are held in Melbourne. The New York School, an informal group of painters, poets, dancers and musicians Melbourne’s Cultural Olympiad includes emerged, holding their first exhibition The 9th five significant exhibitions: architecture and Street Art Exhibition in a building slated for sculpture at the University of Melbourne; demolition at 60 East 9th Street. Curated painting and drawing at the National Gallery by , it includes works by Franz of Victoria; Aboriginal art at the National Kline (who also designed the flyer), Jackson Museum (of Victoria); displays of literature Pollock, Elaine and Willem de Kooning, Helen at the Melbourne Public Library; and graphic Frankenthaler, Philip Guston, Hans Hofmann, arts, industrial design and ceramics at the Robert Motherwell, Joan Mitchell, Robert Royal Melbourne Technical College (now RMIT Rauschenberg, among many others. The group University). was largely held together by Frank O’Hara, a poet and influential curator at the Museum of Black and white television begins in Australia. Modern Art, but dispersed in the early 1960s. http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=43903 1957 Canadian-born Minimalist painter Agnes 1952 Martin settles in New York, where she begins Pollock paints (Number 11), now in to paint ‘empty’ works of few and gentle the National Gallery of Australia. colours structured by lightly stencilled grids. http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=36334 Although restrained and deeply ordered, her work is about the expression of humanity’s New York artist Helen Frankenthaler essential emotions, but in a fashion that is paints Mountains and Sea, a seminal not cluttered or clouded by individual gesture. example of the ‘stain’ painting technique, http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=116209 later referred to as Colour Field. As such she was a pioneering influence upon the 1958 artists who formed the Colour Field school Influential Belgian painter and writer, Michel of painting, Kenneth Noland and Morris Seuphor, publishes A Dictionary of Abstract Louis. Her technique involved pouring thinned Painting, London 1958. The later edition, in paint directly onto raw canvas laid on the 1974, includes Australian abstract artists Mary floor, creating the effect of floating fields of Webb, Margel and Frank Hinder, Clement translucent colour. Meadmore and . Seuphor previously co-founded the abstract artists’ Yvonne Audette departs Australia for America group Cercle et Carré in Paris in 1929. and in October enrols in the Arts Students’ League of New York. 1959 Furniture and interior designer Max Hutchinson 1954 opens in Melbourne, featuring the Audette is awarded the Fogg Scholarship work of emerging abstract artists. In 1963 to study at the New York National Academy he opens Gallery A in Sydney. It was the of Design, School of Fine Arts. During this leading gallery of abstract art in Australia time, she is influenced by Willem de Kooning and many of the treasured works in the NGA’s and visits Franz Kline’s studio, which has a substantial collection of abstract art were significant effect upon her work, especially acquired through Max Hutchinson. The Flat Landscape. http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=105828 1960 http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=269797 First Festival held.

8 1962 1967 ’s first solo show is held at Gallery Two Decades of American Painting curated by One, Soho. The exhibition features a series of the Museum of Modern Art, New York tours monochrome works constructed from only Melbourne, Sydney, Tokyo and New Delhi. The simple geometric shapes that explore the exhibition includes postwar masterpieces of potential of . This style would the New York School. While knowledge of later be coined ‘Op-art’ and become one of these artists had already circulated through the most influential subsets of abstract art. the world, it had a profound influence on a new generation of abstract Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War Australian artists. begins. Australian Federal Referendum for Indigenous Legislation gives the rights. Indigenous Australians finally gain full right to vote in federal elections in Western constitutional rights as citizens. Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory. The federal goverment announces two major arts projects: the formation of the Australia 1963 Council and the decision to accept the Lindsay American President John F Kennedy Report to establish a new national gallery for assassinated. Australia.

1964 1968 The Beatles tour Australia. The Field exhibition of Australian hard-edge, geometric and Colour Field abstraction opens 1965 at the newly built National Gallery of Victoria Bridget Riley, along with , and then travels to the Art Gallery of New is included in The Responsive Eye exhibition South Wales. The exhibition represented the at the Museum of Modern Art in New works of a new generation of young artists and York, establishing Op Art as an important includes three female artists, Wendy Paramor, international style. One of Riley’s paintings Normana Wight and Janet Dawson. The latter is featured on the cover of the exhibition two are represented in Abstraction: Celebrating catalogue. The exhibition is hugely popular Australian Abstract Women Artists. with tickets selling out on the same day they were released. Max Hutchinson relocates his Gallery A to http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=82544 New York where he is instrumental in building the career of Australian Sculptor Clement 1966 Meadmore. He is also influential in negotiating American hard-edge abstract painter of urban the sale of Jackson Pollock’s Blue poles to the landscapes James Doolin takes a position National Gallery of Australia in 1973. as painting teacher at the Prahran Technical http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=48491 College, Melbourne at a time when a highly influential coterie of young painters were Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy studying and teaching there, including Lesley assassinated. Dumbrell, who adopted his preferred medium Liquitex. 1969 http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=41620 Apollo 11 lands on the moon. http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=49519 First banknotes of Australia’s new decimal currency are issued. born artists Virginia Cuppaidge and Denise Green relocate to . Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt promotes Annabel Rankin to Minister for 1970 Housing. She is the first women to hold More than 150,000 people march in protest a portfolio. against Australian involvement in the Vietnam War. http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=155233 http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=90701

9 1971 visits with women artists. Her visit is regarded Linda Nochlin publishes her ground-breaking as coalescing several feminist art initiatives. essay, ‘Why have there been no great women artists?’, which becomes a seminal text within The Women’s Art Register (WAR) is established feminist art history and art theory. by a group of women artists including Lesley Dumbrell and Erica McGilchrist, and the-then The Aboriginal flag is designed by Harold directors of the Ewing and George Paton Thomas. Galleries, Melbourne, Kiffy Carter and Meredith Rogers. Conceived as a ‘Museum without walls’, 1972 it began with 100 women artists contributing Queensland senator Neville Bonner becomes slides of their work, along with paper the first Indigenous Australian to be elected as documentation, articles and ephemera which a Member of Parliament. were stored and administered at the Ewing Gallery. WAR has continually archived material 1973 relating to Australian women artists for use as A major retrospective of Grace Cossington a public resource. Smith’s work is held at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, after which she retires from Australian feminist academic journal painting. This is viewed as the first institutional Hecate: An Interdisciplinary Journal of recognition of Cossington Smith’s contribution Women’s Liberation is founded. In addition to to Australian art history. literary criticism, the journal also discusses contemporary arts more broadly from First Biennale of Sydney. alternative perspectives.

Queen Elizabeth II opens the Sydney Opera House Janine Burke curates Australian Women Artists: One Hundred Years 1840–1940, shown 1974 at the Ewing Gallery and George Paton The Women’s is established Galleries in Melbourne. The exhibition was with groups formed in Sydney, Canberra, produced as an Australian response to Linda Melbourne and Adelaide. The aim of the Nochlin’s 1971 essay ‘Why have there been organisation is to promote women artists and no great women artists?’. The show toured to expose the gender inequalities within the extensively, receiving critical acclaim and also arts industry. acted as a contrast to Bernard Smith’s popular text Australian Painting (1962), which focused A Room of One’s Own: Three Women Artists is on the achievements of male artists. held at Ewing Gallery, University of Melbourne and showcases the work of three contemporary 1976 female artists: Lesley Dumbrell, Julie Irving and The first issue of LIP, A Feminist Arts Journal Ann Newmarch. It is viewed as one of the first is self-published by a feminist collective based feminist art exhibitions in Australia. in Melbourne. The interdisciplinary publication presents a variety of critical feminist positions ‘Advance Australia Fair’ becomes the new and art forms, with the aim of situating national anthem of Australia. Australian art practice within an international context. LIP ceases in 1984. Cyclone Tracy occurs on Christmas Eve in Darwin. http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=41620 Art critic and curator Lucy Lippard publishes From the Centre: Feminist Essays on Australian Commonwealth Parliament passes Women’s Art, which investigates the state the Racial Discrimination Act. of contemporary art criticism and critically considers the idea of ‘feminist art’. Despite its 1975 American focus the book resonates within the Influential American art critic and curator Australian sphere. Lucy Lippard travels to Australia to deliver the Power Lecture at Sydney University on women’s Commonwealth Parliament passes the art. During her trip, Lippard also conducted Aboriginal Land Act. numerous informal lectures about gender http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=2554 inequality in the arts, and conducted studio

10 1977 1990 The commercial gallery Important Women Betty Churcher is appointed as the Director of Artists opens on 2 April 1977 at 13 Emo Road, the National Gallery of Australia, becoming the East Malvern, Melbourne. Directors Helen and first woman to hold the position. Previously, Jim Alexander focus on the works of early to Churcher had been the first female director mid-twentieth century female artists. of a state art gallery at the Art Gallery of Western Australia. 1978 The WAR publishes the first catalogue of its Aboriginal artist Rover Thomas, from the comprehensive holdings. An updated version Kimberley in Western Australia, represents was printed in 1999. Australia at the Venice Biennale. http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=77119 1978 Denise Green, who had relocated to New York 1992 in 1969, is included in two major American A Room for Abstraction opens at Heide institutional exhibitions: Young American Musuem of Modern Art, Melbourne and Artists: 1978 Exxon National Exhibition at includes the work of Brent Harris, Charles the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New Anderson, Kim Donaldson, Diane Kilderry, York and New Image Painting at the Whitney Angela Brennan and James Clayden. The Museum of American Art, New York. Green’s exhibition is seen as showcasing the next involvement in these shows launches her generation of artists working with geometric career in the US. abstraction and reinterpreting it from a postmodern position. The exhibition Abstract 1979 Art, curated the following year by John Nixon Margaret Thatcher becomes the first female for Roslyn Oxley 9, Sydney, includes Melinda British Prime Minister. Harper and similarly showed how younger artists were working with examples of 1982 abstractions. Rosalie Gascoigne is selected as the first female artist to represent Australia at the 1993 Venice Biennale in 1982, alongside Peter Booth. The National Gallery of Australia acquires Her work Harvest 1982 comprised 256 piles of Emily Kam Kngwarray’s Alhalkere Suite 1993, cut newsprint nailed to a plywood board. a monumental installation of 22 canvases. http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=17872 1982 Lesley Dumbrell’s monumental painting 1995 February 1976 is displayed prominently in the Heritage: The national women’s art book edited National Gallery of Australia during its opening by academic Joan Kerr is published and for several years to follow. The work was by Craftsman House. acquired for the NGA by , the inaugural Director, in 1977 after he viewed the Opened by the Hon Dr Carmen Lawrence, the work in Dumbrell’s solo show at Powell Street Women hold up half the sky exhibition shows Gallery, South Yarra. at the National Gallery of Australia. http://artsearch.nga.gov.au/Detail.cfm?IRN=103842 Sydney by design: wood and linoblock prints by Queen Elizabeth II opens National Gallery of Sydney Women artists between the wars tours Australia, Canberra. regional Australia.

1988 1997 WAR publishes its first Bulletin in 1988. The Emily Kam Kngwarray, Yvonne Koolmatrie objective of the periodical is to keep members and Judy Watson, from Central Desert, South informed about art events, news and provide Australia and Queensland respectively, become analysis by peers. the first female indigenous artists to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale. The three 1989 artists presented diverse works which focused Internet first available in Australian Universities. on the fluidity of visual expression.

11 1997 2010 A major, posthumous retrospective of Julia Gillard challenges and deposes Kevin Emily Kam Kngwarray’s work is staged by Rudd and becomes the first female Australian the Queensland Art Gallery, which travels Prime Minister (2010–13). throughout Australia. In the previous year Kngwarray makes a tribute to the NGA 2011 producing for them her final major installation Utopia: The Genius of , the eighteen-part Utopia Panels. the second major survey of Kngwarreye’s work, is organised by the National Museum, Jenny Shipley appointed first female Prime Canberra, and travelled to the National Minister of New Zealand (1997–99). Museum of Art, Osaka and the National Art Centre, Tokyo. 1999 Past Present: The National Women’s Art 2012 Anthology, edited by Jo Holder and Joan Kerr, The Contemporary Australia: Women exhibition is published and comprises a collection of at Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern essays on feminist art, art history, criticism Art celebrates the diversity, energy and and museum practices in Australia. innovation of contemporary women artists working in Australia. 2001 Jane Hylton curates the major exhibition 2015 Modern Australian Women: Paintings & The new Australian Pavilion at the Venice Prints 1925–1945 at the Art Gallery of South Biennale showcases contemporary artist Australia, which highlights the work of Dorrit Fiona Hall’s exhibition Wrong Way Time. Black, Grace Crowley, Margaret Preston, and http://nga.gov.au/WrongWayTime/Default.cfm Grace Cossington Smith, among many others. Other Australian artists represented at 2007 the Biennale include the late Emily Kam The Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art Kngwarreye, Daniel Boyd, Emily Floyd, is donated to the University of Western Marco Fusinato, Newell Harry, Sonia Leber Australia, Perth by Sir James and Lady Sheila and David Chesworth. Cruthers. The collection includes works by Australian women artists from the 1890s 2016 until the present across a variety of mediums. For the first time, women have won three A substantial survey exhibition of the collection of Australia’s best-known art awards on the LOOK LOOK AGAIN was presented at same day. Melbourne artist Louise Hearman Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, Perth in 2012. wins the Archibald prize; The Sulman Prize was awarded to Melbourne artist Esther Sydney Opera House is declared a World Stewart; and five sisters from the Ken family Heritage Site. This is the youngest cultural site – , Yaritji Young, Freda Brady, to be included on the list. Maringka Tunkin and Sandra Ken – who live in the remote Aboriginal community of Amata Julia Gillard is appointed the first female in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Australian Deputy Prime Minister on Lands, win the 2016 Wynne Prize. 3 December.

2008 Quentin Bryce becomes first female Compiled by Lara Nicholls, Sheona Whyte and Biance Hill Governor-General of Australia (2008–14).

2009 Personal Journeys: 40 years of Australian Women’s Abstract Art is held at the Shoalhaven City Arts Centre, Nowra and explores the work of female abstractionists working between 1960 and 2000.

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