Gracing the cover of the Deutscher and Hackett Important Australian + International Fine Art Auction to be held on 22 November 2023, is John Brack’s Wig Shop Window, 1970 (Lot 14 ). Estimated at $600,000 – 800,000, the work promises to lure collectors with its saturated Barbie-pink palette du jour, satirical wit and uneasy ambiguity that encapsulates the artist at his very best.
Opening the sale, Margaret Preston’s exquisitely beautiful flowerpiece Phlox, 1925 (Lot 1 ) represents one of the few remaining masterpieces by the artist from this pivotal period still in private hands, with companion works today predominantly housed in the country’s major public and corporate collections. Like Preston, Cressida Campbell’s joy in the beauty inherent in her personal domestic realm is tangible in the sublime Interior with Red Ginger, 1998 (Lot 17 ), while her Spotted Gums, 1999 presents an awe-inspiring glimpse into the unique primeval landscape around Avalon, on Sydney’s Northern beaches.
Continuing the landscape motif, The Fall, 1981 (Lot 18 ) offers a stunning example of Rosalie Gascoigne’s celebrated soft-drink crate assemblages with its allusions to the inevitability of time passing and seasonal change, while the whimsical nature of William Robinson’s bucolic farmyard scene, Birkdale Farm Construction with Australorps, 1982 – 83 (Lot 22 ) belies a deeper, more serious commentary upon the values of Western painting.
Likewise a master of satire and ambiguity, John Brack is represented well in the auction with the beguiling Wig Shop Window, 1970 (Lot 14 ), a masterly exercise in airless artifice that employs his favoured conceit of the shop window as a stage set for the theatre of human drama; The Surrey Gardens, 1961 (Lot 4 ) depicting the Melbourne locale close to the artist’s home; and Three Figures, 1971 (Lot 15 ) from his gymnast series of 1971-72 which evokes metaphorically the precariousness of human existence.
Other highlights include a selection of eight important Chinese-inspired works by Ian Fairweather from the prestigious collection of Joe and Rose Skinner (lots 5 – 12) who established the Perth gallery bearing their name in 1958 and were absolutely fundamental to the Australian art scene from the early 1950s through to the mid-1970s. Fusing East and West, the paintings capture the artist’s enduring love of Chinese language and culture, nurtured from his first-hand experience of travelling through Asia during the thirties and forties.
Also featured are six rare, early abstractions from the studio of the country’s foremost living modernist, Yvonne Audette (lots 28 – 33). Completed during her seminal years abroad at the forefront of the American and European avant-garde during the 50s and 60s, indeed these major, museum-quality works attest to the unique place Audette occupies in Australian art history as one of the first figures to introduce abstractionism to local audiences.
Consistent with its continued commitment to marketing and selling important international works on the local market, Deutscher and Hackett are offering two original nude studies on paper by Cubist master Pablo Picasso (lots 35 & 36), alongside a major picturesque landscape by the influential and often-overlooked French modernist, Bernard Buffet (Lot 46 ), whose reputation notably rivalled Picasso’s during the fifties.
