IMPORTANT AUSTRALIAN ART

The exhibition will be on view in Sydney today, Wednesday 16 November, 10 am to 5 pm, at 30 Queen Street, Woollahra.

Among the highlights of the sale is Brett Whiteley's magnificent Vision of Bali 1976-1978 (lot 12, estimate $800,000-1,200,000, pictured above).  

Brett Whiteley is widely and appropriately celebrated as one of Australia’s great cultural identities: both a charismatic artist pop star and a phenomenally gifted draughtsman and painter.  Versatile and expansive, his oeuvre encompasses a wide range of media and subjects – in 1978, the year in which the present Vision of Bali (1976-1978) was completed, Whiteley became the first and only artist ever to win all three of the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ prestigious painting prizes; the Archibald (portraiture), the Wynne (landscape) and the Sulman (subject/genre).

While Whiteley’s practice is panoramic and plural – landscapes, interiors and still life, figure paintings, nudes and animals – there are nevertheless a number of persistent, recurrent motifs and symbols.  Some of the most familiar and admired are the supremely seductive and beguiling images of Whiteley’s world viewed from the window – including Bali, Fiji, London, New York, Paris, Tuscany, and of course the most renowned, Sydney – a bird’s eye view of the scene that lay before him in which he could express his creative genius.  

Vision of Bali is the artist’s most splendid visual culmination of a place that resonated with meaning and purpose, a place to which he returned in moments of great happiness, as well as despair.

The auction will be held at the National Council of Jewish Women of Australia, 111 Queen Street, Woollahra at 6.30 pm on 16 November 2022.