The Art of Still Life

Curated from the Gallery’s own collection, this beautiful exhibition features significant artworks by Margaret Preston, Margaret Olley, George W Lambert and Arthur Streeton. Still life, traditionally a minor genre in Australian art, became the arena of sophisticated artistic experiments in the 1920s and 30s.

Like Cézanne and Picasso before them, Sydney artists used still life to experiment with geometry, light, shape, line, colour and texture, as well as the aesthetic relationships between objects. For modern artists, still life was not simply about the objects represented, which were often abstracted, but the inherent qualities of the medium in which they worked.

The 25 works demonstrate the continuous development and representation of the still life in Australian art, allowing comparisons between individual works and more broadly between different periods and styles. Many of these works have not been exhibited for decades.

For more information go Art Gallery of NSW