MARGARET PRESTON ART AND LIFE
EXHIBITION
ARTIST
EVENTS
GARDEN TOURS
EDUCATION
ORDER CATALOGUE
Art Gallery of New South Wales 29 July to 23 October 2005
EXHIBITION
overview
themes
the craft of art: 1901-1911
the decorative vision: 1912-1919
an art for australian: 1920s
the berowra years: 1932–1939
last decades: 1940s and 1950s
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press release
view introductory video
acknowledgments
 
overview

Margaret Preston (1875-1963) is one of Australia’s most celebrated artists and the country’s most important early modernist. Her vibrant, decorative paintings and prints of the 1920s and 30s epitomise a unique era in the history of Australian art. Her works of the 1940s and 50s argue for her re-assessment as one of the country’s most significant landscape artists.

Preston promoted her unique vision for a new, modern Australian art through a synthesis of European and Asian traditions, together with the profound influence of Aboriginal art – which she recognized as one of the world’s great art traditions.

This is the most extensive exhibition ever presented of Margaret Preston’s art, with over 180 works including paintings, prints, pottery, textiles and previously unseen archival material relating to Preston’s colourful life.

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Images:
Wheel flower c1929
(detail) Art Gallery of New South Wales, purchased 1929
Anemones (or Pink jug) 1925
(detail) Art Gallery of New South Wales, gift of Mrs Alison Brown 1968
Double hibiscus 1929
(detail) National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Bequest of John B Pye 1963