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Details
- Date
- 1958
- Media category
- Painting
- Materials used
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 130.0 x 96.8 cm stretcher; 132.2 x 99.3 x 2.4 cm frame
- Signature & date
Signed and dated l.r. corner, red oil "Webb/ '58".
- Credit
- Purchased 2011
- Location
- South Building, ground level, 20th-century galleries
- Accession number
- 304.2011
- Copyright
- © Estate of Mary Webb
- Artist information
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Mary Webb
Works in the collection
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About
Mary Webb, who worked in Sydney and London in the 1940s in a figurative expressionist mode, travelled to Europe in 1949 and subsequently became a significant Australian abstractionist and collagist in Paris in the 1950s. Despite an active exhibition schedule in Paris, where her work attracted significant review, Webb maintained contact with Sydney constructivists Frank Hinder, Ralph Balson and Grace Crowley over this decade.
'Joie de vivre' was shown at Webb's solo exhibition at Galerie R Creuze in Paris, mounted only a month before her untimely death in December 1958. Webb's excursion into 'informel' abstraction in 'Joie de vivre', with its arresting sense of movement, pastel hues, and soft-edged cloud-like forms, represents the artist's most significant painterly achievement, and a singular contribution to Australian abstraction. This recent acquisition, newly rediscovered after over four decades in storage in Paris, is the most important of all currently known works by Webb.
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Exhibition history
Shown in 4 exhibitions
Mary Webb: œuvres récentes, Galerie Raymond Creuze, Paris, 24 Oct 1958–06 Nov 1958
A.D.S Donaldson, David Pestorius Projects, Hamilton, 15 Jun 2011–25 Jun 2011
Know My Name: Australian women artists, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 14 Sep 2020–04 Aug 2021
20th-Century galleries, ground level (rehang), Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 20 Aug 2022–2023
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Bibliography
Referenced in 6 publications
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A.D.S. Donaldson, Mary Webb: our last unknown artist, Sydney, 2008.
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Galerie Raymond Creuze, Mary Webb: œuvres récentes, Paris, 1958. cat.no. 1; titled 'Joie de Vivre'
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S J Lombard, Bulletin de la Galerie Raymond Creuze VII, '[Mary Webb]', pg. 346-349, Paris, (1958), 349 (illus.).
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Michel Seuphor, Dictionnaire de la peinture abstraite: prédécé d'une histoire de la peinture abstraite, 'Webb', pg. 287, Paris, 1957, 287.
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Ann Stephen, Modernism & Australia: documents on art, design and architecture 1917-1967, Melbourne, 2006.
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Wayne Tunnicliffe and Deborah Edwards, Look, ‘New Australia’, pg. 24-27, Sydney, May 2012, 26, (colour illus.).
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