Ballet

Frank Hinder’s legacy to Australian art is a body of prints, drawings and paintings that depict the dynamic rush of modern urban life. His work is remarkable for its rhythmic harmony, lyrical colour and sophistication of design. A founding member of the Contemporary Art Society, Sydney, he was one of a small group of artists crusading for abstraction in Sydney during the 1930s. He had a strong interest in cubist and constructivist principles and theories of dynamic symmetry.

Hinder studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the New York School of Fine and Applied Art (later known as Parsons). He returned to Australia in 1934 with his new wife, American sculptor Margel. In Sydney, they started a commercial art business and soon joined Grace Crowley and Rah Fizelle’s progressive Art School in George Street, bringing their knowledge of European and American abstraction to the group.

Hinder created Ballet in 1940. This lyrical composition is a rhythmic and fragmented vision of a ballet performance, likely depicting the Ballet Russe which toured Australia in 1940, the year this drawing was made. The flurry of graceful movement of the ballet dancers are expressed in Hinder’s fragmented forms, where he merges Cubism, Futurism and Orphism into a harmonious depiction of dance. This work was exhibited at the Gallery in 1980 in the joint retrospective exhibition Frank and Margel Hinder 1930 – 1980.