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PAUL PARTOS (1943 - 2002) TAURUS, 1994 – 95 oil on canvas 224.0 x 197.5 cm signed, dated and inscribed with title verso: Paul Partos / 1994 - 5 / TITLE TAURUS PROVENANCE Sherman Galleries, Sydney Ann Lewis, Sydney Thence by descent Private collection, Sydney EXHIBITED Paul Partos, Sherman Galleries, Sydney, 29 June – 22 July 1995, cat. 3 (illus. in exhibition catalogue) © Paul Partos/Copyright Agency 2023 This work is located in our Sydney Gallery This work in fair condition. In the central area, which features thick impasto oil paint, there are numerous areas of old surface cracks, which have resulted in areas / patches of loss and lifting paint. These areas are difficult discern and are only visually distracting on close inspection. The work would benefit from some conservation to stabilise these areas. There is no evidence of past restoration.
Deutscher and HackettPAUL PARTOS (1943-2002) Untitled 1981-82 etching, ed. 7/10 signed, dated and editioned below image 19 x 15cm; frame size: 63 x 46cm
Leonard JoelPAUL PARTOS (1943-2002) Beyond 1980 etching, ed. 3/10 signed, dated and editioned below image 19.5 x 15cm; frame size: 63 x 46cm
Leonard JoelPAUL PARTOS (1943-2002) Beyond 1980 etching, ed. 3/10 signed, dated and editioned below image 19.5 x 15cm; frame size: 63 x 46cm
Leonard JoelPAUL PARTOS (1943-2002) Untitled 1981-82 etching, ed. 7/10 signed, dated and editioned below image 19 x 15cm; frame size: 63 x 46cm
Leonard JoelPAUL PARTOS, UNTITLED 1985, COLOURED LITHOGRAPH ED. 5/15, SIGNED AND DATED BELOW IMAGE, 76 X 56CM (SHEET), FRAME SIZE: 97 X 75.5CM
Leonard JoelPAUL PARTOS, UNTITLED 1985, COLOURED LITHOGRAPH ED.5/15, SIGNED AND DATED BELOW IMAGE, 76 X 56CM (SHEET), FRAME SIZE: 97 X 75.5CM
Leonard JoelPAUL PARTOS (1943-2002) Calendar Painting 1987 oil on canvas signed, titled and dated verso: Paul Partos 1987 / Calendar painting Anima Gallery label attached verso 107 x 96cm PROVENANCE: The Artist's Studio Private collection, Melbourne
Leonard JoelPAUL PARTOS, UNTITLED 1985, COLOURED LITHPGRAPH ED.5/15, SIGNED AND DATED BELOW IMAGE, 76 X 56CM (SHEET), FRAME SIZE: 97 X 75.5CM
Leonard JoelPAUL PARTOS (1943 - 2002) Abstract, 1996 watercolour, gouache and collage 64 x 62 cm (frame: 85 x 82 x 4 cm) signed and dated lower left, labelled verso
LawsonsPAUL PARTOS (1943-2002) Untitled 1994 etching, ed. P/P editioned, signed and dated below image 44.5 x 35.5cm PROVENANCE: Viridian Press, Victoria Private collection, Victoria
Leonard JoelPAUL PARTOS (1943-2002) UNTITLED Signed and dated 79 lower right Oil on aluminium 90 x 70cm $5,000/8,000
GFL Fine ArtUntitled, 1985 lithograph on paper, edition: 5/15, numbered, signed and dated below image '5/15, Paul Partos, 1985'
Shapiro AuctioneersPAUL PARTOS (1943-2002) The Flow 1992 oil on linen signed, titled and dated verso: Paul Partos 1992/ THE FLOW 224 x 197.5cm PROVENANCE: The Artist, 1993 The National Australia Bank Art Collection
Leonard JoelPAUL PARTOS (1943 - 2002) PAINTING, 1978 oil, string and pins on canvas 137.0 x 111.5 cm signed and dated verso: P Partos 78 PROVENANCE Probably: Pinacotheca, Melbourne Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne The National Australia Bank Art Collection, acquired from the above in August 1979 (label attached verso) EXHIBITED Eureka! : artists from Australia, Serpentine Gallery, London, 13 March – 25 April 1982, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 24 March – 25 April 1982 (label attached verso, illus. in exhibition catalogue, p. 31) The Seventies: Australian Paintings and Tapestries from the Collection of National Australia Bank, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 15 October – 28 November 1982 Collection of Modern Art in the Seventies, Latrobe Valley Arts Centre, Victoria, 9 May - 2 June 1985 The Seventies: Australian Paintings and Tapestries from the Collection of National Australia Bank, Geelong Art Gallery, Victoria, 30 April - 29 May 1988 'The Seventies' Exhibition: Selected Paintings from the National Australia Bank Collection 'Modern Art of the Seventies', Caulfield Arts Complex, Melbourne, 18 January - 11 February 1990, cat. 17 LITERATURE Lindsay, R., The Seventies: Australian Paintings and Tapestries from the Collection of National Australia Bank, The National Bank of Australasia, Melbourne, 1982, pl. 70, p. 83 (illus.) 'Insight into Recent Art', The Express, Victoria, 2 May 1985, p. 12 ESSAY There have been many times over almost 200 years when the death or end of painting has been declared. Paul Delaroche claimed ‘From today, painting is dead’ when he saw the first daguerreotype around 1840.1 Marcel Duchamp rejected painting and in 1917, his porcelain readymade, a urinal titled Fountain and signed R. Mutt, defined his future. The great American Minimalist, Donald Judd, thought painting was finished, something he and the proponents of Conceptualism had in common. None of this was lost on Paul Partos. Painting, 1978 is from a crucial time for the artist – his interest in Conceptualism and new international currents had been experienced firsthand from the mid-sixties.2 It wasn’t an impulse reaction in the wake of the much-vaunted international exhibitions travelling to Australia.3 Partos arrived in Australia from Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, as a six-year-old. In 1959 he enrolled at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology – other students included Lesley Dumbrell, Gareth Sansom, Robert Jacks and George Baldessin. His expressive figuration revealed an emerging painter of prodigious talent. Melbourne’s Gallery A held a sell-out exhibition in 1965 and Gallery A in Sydney held a solo exhibition later in the year. His expressionist inclinations soon cooled and in 1968 he made Vesta II which was included in The Field exhibition.4 It is a rectangular sprayed painting and within it is a smaller empty rectangle where the wall on which it hangs is visible. The idea of the work framing itself was already in play. Black Screen, 1968 – 69 is a vertical rectangular sculpture where nylon mesh is stretched over a wooden frame which literally frames a delicately poised translucent folded form.5 In Painting, 1978, painting becomes a visualised process and system – one able to inquire into and be about itself. It is a timely inquiry about the nature and physical presence of painting at a time of considerable theoretical posturing about art and its future, both in Australia and abroad. Partos was a gifted painter and he never dismissed painting’s sensory and emotional potential – we are certain of this from his formative figurative work and what followed Painting. But here Partos develops a visual and conceptual proposition which is delineated and ordered – where the act of looking and thinking is never superseded by the expressive capacity of paint itself and any subject it might depict. Nothing exists beyond the painting itself. It becomes a masterly combination of the artist’s natural painterly impulses and his strong intellectual inquisitiveness. 1. Paul Delaroche (1797 – 1856), celebrated French painter of historical subjects. 2. Between 1965 – 66 Partos was in Europe and London. He was living in New York City in 1970 – 72. 3. Charles Green, ‘Notes on the Centre: Two Decades of American Painting in Australia, 1967’, Tate Papers, no.32, Autumn 2019. 4. The Field, National Gallery of Victoria, 1968, a landmark exhibition of Colourfield abstraction to mark the opening of the NGV at its new StKilda Road premises. Vesta II, 1968, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, collection of the Art Gallery New South Wales 5. Black Screen, 1968 – 69, synthetic polymer paint on nylon mesh on wooden framework, collection of Geelong Art Gallery, Victoria Corio 5 Star Whiskey Prize, 1969 DOUG HALL AM © Paul Partos/Copyright Agency 2022
Deutscher and HackettPAUL PARTOS (1943-2002) Untitled 1980 - 2001 drypoint etching editioned, signed and dated in pencil below image 19.5 x 14.5cm PROVENANCE: Private collection, Melbourne
Leonard JoelPAUL PARTOS (1943 - 2002) Untitled gouache and watercolour on paper 76 x 57.5 cm (frame: 102 x 83 x 3 cm) signed lower right
LawsonsPAUL PARTOS (1943-2002) Untitled 1980 mixed media on paper signed and dated lower right: P Partos 80 76 x 56.5 cm
Gibson's AuctionsOval Painting, 1985 oil on canvas, signed and dated verso 'Paul Partos, '85'
Shapiro AuctioneersPAUL PARTOS (AUSTRALIAN, 1943-2002) UNTITLED NO. 9, 1996 Oil on canvas: 70 1/8 x 57 in. Framed; verso: signed, dated and titled: Paul Partos/ Untitled no. 9 1996
Potomack CompanyPAUL PARTOS 1943-2002 Untitled (Ochre-Blue) 1996 oil on linen signed, dated and inscribed 'Paul Partos 1996 / Untitled (Ochre-Blue)' verso 140 x 122 cm PROVENANCE Christine Abrahams Gallery, Melbourne (label verso) Mrs Rae Rothfield, Melbourne, acquired from the above in 1996
Smith & SingerPAUL PARTOS, (1943 - 2002), CALENDAR PAINTING, 1988, oil on canvas SIGNED: signed, dated and inscribed with title verso: Paul Partos 1988 / Calendar painting DIMENSIONS: 197.0 x 172.5 cm PROVENANCE: Realities Gallery, Melbourne (label attached verso) Private collection, Sydney EXHIBITED: probably: Paul Partos, Calendar Day Paintings, Realities Gallery, Melbourne October November 1988
Deutscher and HackettPAUL PARTOS, UNTITLED, 1990, ETCHING, 29 X 28 CM
Leonard JoelPaul Partos (1943 - 2002) Time etching and aquatint, ed. 16/75 44 x 35cm signed lower right
Lawsons