MEDIA RELEASE Wednesday 30 April 2014 Bringing to light two influential South Australian artists- Mortimer Menpes and Dorrit Black Staged side by side, The World of Mortimer Menpes: painter, etcher, raconteur and Dorrit Black: unseen forces reveal the pioneering role that each artist played, albeit in different circles and at different times. These two retrospectives, running from Saturday 14 June to Sunday 7 September 2014, will celebrate the life work of two influential, Adelaide-born artists. Mortimer Menpes and Dorrit Black were both painters and printmakers who shared a common desire to travel the world to develop their careers in art. Although a generation apart they both shared a love of recording the ordinary and natural world. Menpes (1855–1938) was South Australia’s first artist to have a successful international career. He was born in Port Adelaide and moved to London with his parents in 1875. For a time he was closely associated with James McNeill Whistler and his Aesthetic style. In 1887 he travelled to Japan and his subsequent exhibition was an overwhelming success. During the 1890s he held eight major solo exhibitions in London resulting from diverse overseas trips. His famous Japanese-style house in London’s Cadogan Gardens provided the perfect setting for his foray into portraiture and became a hub for artistic soirées – where writers, artists, politicians, high society and the leading lights in the theatre world, mingled. Menpes never returned to Australia, although many of his works have. The World of Mortimer Menpes: painter, etcher, raconteur, curated by Julie Robinson, will include paintings, prints, drawings and ceramics, assembled from public and private collections in Australia and overseas. Black (1891–1951) returned to Australia from her European travels in 1929 and brought with her the revolutionary movement of cubism. She established the ground-breaking Modern Art Centre in Sydney in 1931, and her teaching and practice inspired a wave of young artists, including Jeffrey Smart who described her permanent return to Adelaide in 1934 ‘like a shot of adrenaline’. While living in Adelaide she produced some of Australia’s greatest landscapes of the mid-twentieth century. Curated by Tracey Lock-Weir, Dorrit Black: unseen forces will include all aspects of Black’s work – oil paintings, watercolours, drawings, textiles and her dynamic linocut prints. It will highlight her as one of Australia’s foremost modernist artists and teachers, who significantly contributed to the acceptance of modernism in Australia. ENDS __________________________________________________________________________________ Image Left: Dorrit Black, Australia, 1891–1951, The Bridge, 1930, Sydney, oil on canvas on board, 60.0 x 81.0 cm; Bequest of the artist 1951. Image Right: Mortimer Menpes, Britain/Australia, 1855–1938, A Japanese procession, c.1897, gouache, watercolour on paperboard, 36.3 x 32.4 cm; Collection of David and Pam McKee. MEDIA CONTACT Marika Lucas-Edwards, Communications Manager, Art Gallery of South Australia E [email protected] | T 08 8207 7156 | M 0407 077 102 High resolution images with captions available for downloaded from: The World of Mortimer Menpes - http://bit.ly/1p8Wkrh | Dorrit Black: unseen forces - http://bit.ly/1gU1xBe Publications Dorrit Black: unseen forces will be accompanied by a full colour illustrated monograph outlining the artist’s extraordinary life and artistic output. Based on several years of research and written by the exhibition curator, Tracey Lock-Weir, the monograph reveals Dorrit Black as an artist of unsuspected importance. In the publication The World of Mortimer Menpes: painter, etcher, raconteur the various strands of the artist’s practice – his paintings, etchings, drawings, ceramics, books and interior design – have been brought together for the first time, providing the opportunity for a new audience to discover his art and life. Authors survey his achievements as a travel artist, portraitist and printmaker, and provide insights into his persona, his milieu, his artistic philosophy and methods. Both publications are available at the Gallery Shop. RRP $49.95 each __________________________________________________________________________________ MEDIA ANGLES – Mortimer Menpes . The first retrospective of the artist’s work ever held The World of Mortimer Menpes features over 250 works of art including paintings, prints and a never before seen sketchbook drawn from public and private collections in Australia, England, Scotland, France and the United States. The exhibition demonstrates Menpes’ success and versatility as an artist. He was constantly challenging himself, developing new ideas and techniques. Apprenticeship – in his early career (1880 – 1887) Menpes’ greatest influence was artist James McNeill Whistler. He observed Whistler’s techniques, approach to composition and subject matter, display and promotion. It was through Whistler, Menpes became attuned to the growing popularity in London of Japanese art and objects, and it was his eventual pursuit of this (by way of travel to Japan) that contributed to his falling out with Whistler . Intrepid traveller – throughout the 1890s Menpes established a pattern of travelling to foreign lands, then holding exhibitions of related works on his return. His travel stories, social observations and paintings captured public imagination. Menpes ventured to India, Burma and Kashmir, Venice, France, Spain, Morocco, Cairo, Mexico and a number of times to Japan. His connection with Japan, through travel, exhibitions and building a Japanese-inspired house, earned him the nickname ‘Japanese Menpes’. Portraiture – in the late 1890s Menpes established himself as a society portraitist. His newly built home at Cadogan Gardens, Chelsea, with its Japanese-inspired and crafted interiors, became a hub for artistic soirees, and celebrity sitters eagerly flocked there to sit for portraits including writers, artists, politicians, high society and the leading lights in the theatre world including Sir Henry Irving, the most famous British actor of the day and leading French actress, Sarah Bernhardt. Australian Prime Minister Sir Edmund Barton visited in 1902. Mona Lisa in Adelaide – A collection of old masters paintings will go on display in the exhibition but they are all fakes! The 10 works – including copies of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Rembrandt’s Self-portrait leaning on a stone sill and Frans Hals’s The laughing cavalier – were painted by Menpes at the beginning of the twentieth century. He visited the great galleries of Europe, meticulously copying some of the world’s most famous works of art in an effort to bring the rest of the world closer to them. In 1911, Menpes donated 38 of the copies to the Australian Government, reasoning that most Australians would never get to see the originals. These works are currently part of the Pictures Collection at the National Library of Australia. __________________________________________________________________________________ MEDIA ANGLES – Dorrit Black . Dorrit Black: unseen forces is the largest retrospective ever staged of the artist’s work and is the first exhibition in nearly forty years to reassess Black’s contribution to the story of Australian art. Black is the last of the major Australian modern women to be the subject of a recent monograph and retrospective. She was one of the most important Australian modernists, advancing and promoting the cause of modern art in Australia through her practice, advocacy and teaching. Printmaking - in September1927 Black arrived in London and attended the Grosvenor School of Modern Art. She studied under linocut printmaker, Claude Flight, whose pioneering ideas, advice and encouragement had an enduring effect on her career. Black was involved in the first ever exhibition of linocuts in London in 1929. This was a key exhibition in printmaking and to this day prints from Grosvenor School artist from the same period are in high demand - Black’s The Eruption fetched a record $84,608 in a recent Bonhams auction (April 2014). Breakthrough period - in Black’s ‘Account of travel and work 1927–29’ she indicates that by going to France she ‘crossed over [to acquire] a definite understanding of the aims and methods of the modern movement and, in particular – of the Cubists’. The medieval hilltop village of Mirmande, in the south of France, was the location of French cubist teacher André Lhote’s summer school. It was here, along with her contemporaries Grace Crowley and Anne Dangar, that Black made significant artistic advances with cubist techniques as demonstrated in her landscape painting, Mirmande. Sydney’s Modern Art Centre – on her return to Australia in 1931 Black established Sydney’s Modern Art Centre in answer to Australia’s delayed response to modern art. In doing so she broke new ground becoming the first woman in Australia to run an art gallery and establishing the first art institution in the country to use the word ‘modern’ in the title..