Beschreibung:

♡ DORRIT BLACK (1891-1951) The Castle, Taormina c.1928-29 colour linocut on cream wove paper, printed from five blocks in yellow ochre, blue, green, red brown, ed. 5/50 initialled lower right in pencil upon image editioned and inscribed with title beneath image: Sicily, The Castle, Taormina 5/50 20 x 26cm PROVENANCE: Sotheby's, Sydney, 17 November 1988, The Collection of Colin Lanceley Leonard Joel, The Estate of Colin Lanceley Sydney, 16 November 2015, Private collection, Sydney EXHIBITIONS: First Exhibition of Linocuts, The Redfern Gallery, London 1929, cat. no. 41 (another example) A Group of Seven, Macquarie Galleries, Sydney 1930, cat. no. 26 (another example) Drawing, Print and Watercolour, Contemporary Artist's Society, Adelaide 1952, cat. no. 9 (another example) A Survey of Australian Relief Prints 1900-1950, Deutscher Galleries, 13 April - 5 May, 1978, cat. no 124 (another example) Dorrit Black Collection, Josef Lebovic Gallery, Sydney 1999, cat. no. 3 (another example) Out of the Darkness: Prints and Drawings from the University of Western Australia Art Collection, Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, Perth 2010 (another example) Dorrit Black Retrospective Exhibition, Royal South Australian Society of Arts, Adelaide 2011, cat. no. 15 (another example) Dorrit Black Unseen Forces, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 14 June - 7 September 2014 (another example) LITERATURE: Lock, T., Dorrit Black Unseen Forces, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2017, p. 50, 152, 200 (illustrated, another example) Butler, R. & Deutscher, C., A Survey of Australian Relief Prints 1900-1950, Deutscher Galleries, Melbourne, 1978, p. 93 (illustrated, another example) OTHER NOTES: Dorrit Black was at the forefront of the modernist movement, and a key participant in bringing these ideas to Australia from Europe in the 1920s. Leaving Adelaide for England in 1927, Dorrit Black attended the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in London to study under Claude Flight three days a week. Flight took great interest in Black's rhythmic use of colour and suggested using a multi lino-block to refine the build-up of colour within each print, a technique executed by only his most advanced students. Having forged a great relationship, Flight and Black kept in close contact even after Black had departed London to travel around Europe. The pair would write to eachother about their learnings and exchange concepts, with Flight even displaying her works amongst his own and that of other students. Joining her Australian comrades, Grace Crowley and Anne Dangar, Black enrolled in the Academie Lhote on Rue d'Odessa in Montparnasse. Intrigued by the aims and methods of the Cubist Modernist Movement, Black was eager to work with teacher Andre Lhote, one of the original Cubist artists. In the late 1920s, Black travelled through Europe, spending three weeks in Taormina, Sicily. This is where Black would produce some of her most prolific works blending the modern printmaking teachings of Flight with the Cubist perspectives of Lhote. "The Castle, Taormina" demonstrates volume and solidity through the advanced overlaying of colour and the dramatic vertical forms and shadows. Rather than the use of thick black outline, Dorrit expertly balances her use of block colour and integrates shadowing and depth through segmented line to depict the angled surface of the landscape. Dorrit succesfully represents the towering heights of the Sicilian mountains and the dramatic formations of cloud in the sky, dissecting her subject into a balanced and striking modernist composition. Her geometric depiction and patterning of the landscape is a great example of her experimentation with modern methods and her complete adherence to the principles she had recently learnt. In 1929, Claude Flight held the First Exhibition of British Linocuts at Redfern Gallery, London. Five linocuts by Black had been selected, including "The Castle, Taormina". Flight wrote to Black: "let me congratulate you