Sydney Group
Australian group of artists, founded in 1945 and active until c. 1957. Their intention was to reverse the obvious decline of the New South Wales Society of Artists, which had become a repository for the most conservative forces in the Sydney art world. Those exhibiting at the first group exhibition included the painters Jean Bellette (b 1909) and her husband Paul Haeflinger (1914–82), David Strachan (1919–70), Francis Lymburner (1916–72), Eric Wilson (1911–46), Wallace Thornton (b
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Sydney Group
Australian group of artists, founded in 1945 and active until c. 1957. Their intention was to reverse the obvious decline of the New South Wales Society of Artists, which had become a repository for the most conservative forces in the Sydney art world. Those exhibiting at the first group exhibition included the painters Jean Bellette (b 1909) and her husband Paul Haeflinger (1914–82), David Strachan (1919–70), Francis Lymburner (1916–72), Eric Wilson (1911–46), Wallace Thornton (b 1915), Wolfgang Cardamatis (b 1917), Justin O’Brien, Geoffrey Graham and the sculptor Gerald Lewers (1905– 62). Bellette, a prominent female artist in what was still a prevalently male domain, exercised considerable polemical skill in advancing the aims of the group, while developing as a fine neo-classicist; Haeflinger shared in forcing through change. There was little else in common between Strachan, Lymburner, Wilson, Thornton, Lewers, Graham and the Berlin-born Cardamatis, other than a high professionalism and a degree of figurative work that represented the non-abstract traditions of early modernism and a respect for historical development in other parts of the world. Strachan favoured still-life or figure painting; Wilson was a landscape painter who admired Purism and the work of Amédée Ozenfant; and O’Brien is thought to have been influenced by Byzantine traditions. A continuing restlessness with the inhibitions of the post-war cultural climate led Bellette and Haeflinger to move to Europe in 1957, precipitating the group’s demise.
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