‘Guy Grey-Smith: Art as Life’ is the first full retrospective of the work of Grey-Smith since his death. Grey-Smith (1916-1981) was a Western Australian artist whose challenging paintings of the Western Australian landscape secured his position as an artist of national importance in the 1960s. Featuring more than 100 works, ‘Art as Life’ focuses on recurrent themes and motifs to illustrate his powerful and unique contribution to the revitalisation of Australian painting in the post-war period.
The exhibition displays major paintings from all periods of Guy Grey-Smith’s career, showing him to be an outstanding colourist as well as structural painter. Running from the earliest completed paintings to his monumental landscapes of the late 1970s, and including still life and figure studies as well as works on paper and ceramics, the retrospective will give a new insight into the remarkable work of this determined Western Australian modernist who lived his life in pursuit of art.
Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA) Director, Stefano Carboni, said “Guy Grey-Smith is widely acknowledged as one of this State’s most significant artists. AGWA is delighted to present ‘Guy Grey-Smith: Art as Life’, celebrate his achievements and bring an understanding of the artist and his work to new audiences. This is the first retrospective of Grey-Smith’s work since his passing away in 1981, and the Gallery is honoured to share with visitors the breadth of his artistic practice.”
Grey-Smith brought a new imaginative power to the depiction of the Western Australian landscape. Focused on painting ‘directly from nature’, Grey-Smith’s seemingly abstract paintings are in fact deeply felt and considered representations of specific places, many well-known to local audiences. His subjects extend from the oppressive, parched landscapes of the Pilbara to the lush karri forests around Pemberton, and the exhibition will illustrate how his search to create a connection with this subject matter was realised through the increasingly pared back compositions he developed.
Stefano went on to say, “It is a testament to the high regard in which Grey-Smith is held within Western Australia that several other public, corporate and private collections also represent the artist in depth, so that it has been both a joy and a challenge for the exhibition’s curator, Melissa Harpley, to select the works for display from such rich sources.”
AGWA curator of Historical Painting, Sculpture and Design, Melissa Harpley, commented, “Guy Grey-Smith’s desire to capture the essence of his subject through paint is evident even in his early works. By the late 1950s he was forging his own compelling painterly language for the depiction of the Western Australian landscape, resulting in an approach that would characterise his future paintings”.
Art Gallery of Western Australia
Until 14 July, 2014
Perth
Torbay, 1957, oil on canvas, 69.5 x 92cm
Portrait of the artist’s wife, 1950, oil canvas, 50.6 x 40.3cm
Courtesy City of Fremantle. © Susanna Grey-Smith and Mark Grey-Smith. Photo Victor France.
