Image:
Ron ROBERTSON-SWANN
Atlantis 1973
painted steel
22.8 x 78.8 x 68.8 cm
1960s and 70s painting and sculpture from the artist’s collection
13th Dec 2024 — 16th Feb 2025
Simpson Gallery
Drawn directly from the artist’s collection, Illusion and Gravity provides a rare insight into the early painting and sculptural output of one of Australia’s most significant and enduring abstractionists, Ron Robertson-Swann.
Featured paintings are drawn from the same period as those exhibited in the seminal National Gallery of Victoria exhibition, The Field, and similarly illustrate the artist’s interest in the physical dynamics and sculptural properties of painting.
As Charles and Kate Nodrum observed;
“Stylistically, the paintings and the sculpture diverged early on. In sculpture, the use of straight, curved, fabricated and found steel, welded and then painted in monochrome – with its endless scope in the way narrative and mood can be evoked through scale, form and colour – has remained his favoured process… In painting, the straight lines and thinly washed polychrome surfaces of the 60s gave way to curvilinear forms and slightly richer surfaces in the 70s.”
About the Artist
Ron Robertson-Swann’s career spans over five decades – as an artist, teacher, mentor and as an advocate for sculpture in public spaces.
Best known as a sculptor, painting is a vital element of his practice, and he produces both from his Botany studio in Sydney.
Born in Sydney in 1941, he studied under Lyndon Dadswell at the National Art School before moving to the UK in the early 60s to study under Anthony Caro and Philip King at St Martin’s – while also assisting Henry Moore in his studio north of London. Without the resources to make steel sculpture during this time he dedicated his energy to painting, influenced heavily by Morris Louis and the hard-edge colour-field painters of the era. In 1965 Clement Greenberg awarded Robertson-Swann first prize in the junior section of the John Moore Painting Prize in Liverpool; in 1968 he was included in The Field exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria; and in 1969 he won the Transfield Prize.
On his return to Sydney he continued to paint while his sculpture practice grew. Major commissions of public sculpture included Vertex in Devonport in 1980, Leviathan at Play in Brisbane in 1984, and Paradisio for the Sydney Festival in 1999.
Robertson-Swann was Head of Sculpture at the National Art School from 2009-2018.
Supported by
