Grace Crowley’s Contribution to Australian Modernism and Geometric Abstraction

Dianne Ottley

feb 2010 · Cambridge Scholars Publishing

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Grace Crowley has been recognized as a product of European modernism and was one of the leading innovators of geometric abstraction in Australia. Having studied in Paris in the 1920s with one of the leading art teachers, writers and theorists, André Lhote, she returned to Australia having mastered the complex mathematics and geometry of the golden section and dynamic symmetry, that had become a framework for modernism. Through her teaching of these compositional techniques at the most progressive modern art school in Sydney in the 1930s, she became a crucial influence on the group of artists now recognized as the historical forerunners to American colour-field painting introduced to Australia in the 1960s, and Australian abstraction.

Through her close friendship with Anne Dangar, who played a critical role in the success of Albert Gleizes’ utopian art colony in rural France, Crowley maintained contact with mainstream European modernism and links to the Abstraction-Creation Group in Paris. During the 1940s and 1950s, Crowley worked with fellow-artist Ralph Balson, and together they developed their own style of geometric abstract art which reflected the spiritual dimensions of Kandinsky and Mondrian. Although undervalued in her own time, the sincerity and uncompromising quality of her work that transcends national boundaries, makes her one of the most important Australian women artists of her generation.

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Dianne Ottley was born and educated in Sydney, Australia. Following her marriage in 1965, she and her husband lived and worked in England from 1967 to 1970, during which time they travelled in Britain and Europe. Now with four grown sons and four grand-daughters, her interests include art, music and theatre. A long-term interest in art led to her becoming a Volunteer Guide at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, specialising mainly in Australian and Aboriginal art.

Ottley graduated from the University of Sydney in 2002 with a Bachelor of Arts, First Class Honours, in Art History and Theory. Her post-graduate research focused on Australian modernist artist, Grace Crowley. She graduated with a Master of Philosophy, with Distinction, in Art History and Theory from the University of Sydney in 2007.