Australian abstract expressionism Ralph Balson
«A leading modernist painter, Ralph Balson is credited with holding the first solo exhibition of purely abstract work in Australia. Linked with a small group of artists pursuing modernism in Sydney from the early 1930s, he was exceptional in his development towards an entirely non-objective form of painting over a protracted period. Initially Grace Crowley’s pupil, Balson later inspired his former teacher to experiment further with abstraction, although his career reaped the greater benefit from their association.Balson was apprenticed to a plumber and house painter in Dorset, where he was raised, and did not begin painting until his early thirties following his arrival in Australia in 1913. In the early 1920s he began night classes at the Julian Ashton Art School in Sydney, studying with Ashton, Crowley, Anne Dangar and Henry Gibbons, while supporting his young family through house painting. Through Crowley in particular, Balson absorbed much of the geometric constructive approach advocated by French Cubists André Lhote and Albert Gleizes. He attended the evening sketch club at Dorrit Black’s Modern Art Centre with Crowley and in March 1930 participated in the group exhibition, Progressive Art..........»
