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| Image | Sale date | Auction house | Location | Sale name | Lot No. | Estimate | Price Sold | Condition | Title |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Nov 24, 2014 | Bonhams | Sydney | Important Australian Art | 35 | Estimates not disclosed | Two Figures with Flowers |
paintings
152 x 136 cm (59.84 x 53.54 in)
oil on board
signed and dated 'Blackman '59' top left
South Yarra Galleries, Melbourne,
Private collection, London, acquired from the above c.1965
Charles Blackman painted Two figures with flowers in 1959, a critically important time in his evolution as an artist. In January 1959, his work was included in Survey III Figurative Painting at the National Gallery of Victoria alongside Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd, John Perceval and Fred Williams. In August of that year he eight major canvases in the watershed exhibition Antipodeans organized by art critic Bernard Smith and including artists such as John Brack, Arthur Boyd and Robert Dickerson. So serious were the aims of the Antipodeans that they printed 'The Antipodean Manifesto' as a preface to the catalogue for the show. The crux of the manifesto sought to apparently liberate the artist from the shackles of abstract expressionism and action painting, which they believed dominated artistic practice and criticism in the 1950s. They worried that abstractionists would 'threaten to benumb the intellect and wit of art with their bland and pretentious mysteries," thus they intended to reassert the preeminence of the figure in painting.1
