Title
(Red, black & white - arabesques no 1)
circa 1962-circa 1965
Artist
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Details
- Other Title
- Untitled (Red, black & white - arabesques no.1)
- Date
- circa 1962-circa 1965
- Media category
- Painting
- Materials used
- synthetic polymer paint on hardboard
- Dimensions
- 122.3 x 122.3 cm board
- Signature & date
Not signed. Not dated.
- Credit
- Bequest of Margaret Tuckson 2015
- Location
- Not on display
- Accession number
- 226.2015
- Copyright
- © Estate of the artist/Copyright Agency
- Artist information
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Tony Tuckson
Works in the collection
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About
Tony Tuckson is widely acknowledged as Australia's pre-eminent abstract expressionist painter. From the late 1950s, Tuckson abandoned representations of the figure in his art and developed a spectacular abstract aesthetic that he worked on in various distinct phases throughout the 1960s until his death in the early 1970s. His style moved from an early calligraphic emphasis on mark making to his final sensuous and sweeping veils of paint that one critic referred to as Tuckson's own formula for the sublime.
Throughout the years of his tenure as an arts administrator at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (between 1950-1973) Tuckson's painting practice was a relatively personal pursuit. So much so that when an exhibition was held of his works at Watters Gallery in 1973, his painting appeared to many as a revelation, and he was declared Australia's leading abstract expressionist painter and an 'undiscovered master'.
Tuckson's work contains the gestural hallmarks of the international movements of Abstract Expressionism and Action painting, yet they also confront us as powerfully distinct in their expressive capacities. The works of those who inspired him may have appeared more obvious in the early stages of his practice (the impact of Rauschenberg for example can be detected in his 'red, black and white' series), and yet his interpretation of twentieth century masters produced a style that was in more ways the artist's own. Tuckson's engaged study of the extraordinary heritage of Aboriginal art also led him to reconsider the formal elements of his abstraction, contributing to the highly individualised, and some argue localised, distinctions of his abstract oeuvre.
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Exhibition history
Shown in 1 exhibition
Tony Tuckson, themes and variations, Heide Park and Art Gallery, Melbourne, 02 May 1989–18 Jun 1989
Tony Tuckson, themes and variations, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 28 Jun 1989–27 Jul 1989
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Bibliography
Referenced in 2 publications
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Terence Maloon, Tony Tuckson: themes and variations, Bulleen, 1989, 15. cat.no. 28
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David Marr., theguardian.com/au, 'Tony Tuckson's abstract masterpieces left to Australian nation by his widow', Sydney, 11 Dec 2013, n.pag.. viewed 19.05.2015, http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/nov/03/tony-tucksons-abstract-masterpieces-left-to-australian-nation-by-his-widow
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