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Birds following a plough 1933

Artwork Birds following a plough this artwork made of Colour linocut on thin off-white laid Oriental paper, created in 1933-01-01
Accession No.
2:1311
Date Created
1933
Gallery location
Not on public display
Department
Australian Art
Dimensions A
23.2 x 36cm
Media Category
Print
Secondary Media Category
relief
Medium
Colour linocut on thin off-white laid Oriental paper
Credit Line
Purchased 1979

Ethel Spowers studied at the National Gallery of Victoria School throughout the 1910s and met fellow artist Eveline Syme in the 1920s. Together they became influential Melbourne Modernists and the best of friends. Like Syme, Spowers studied at the Grosvenor School, London, with Claude Flight, who was instrumental in developing and popularising modern linocut techniques. The asymmetry and swirling geometric forms in Birds following a plough 1933 exemplify Spowers’s adept application of Flight’s teachings. The vivid green Spowers has employed in the background features frequently in her work and is used as a distinctly modern decorative element. 

In Birds following a plough, Spowers also subverts the tradition of Australian landscape painting, both stylistically and in choosing to employ the linocut technique over the more conventional medium of oil on canvas.
 

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