Ralph Balson

Christie's, sale no. 6, October 1971, lot 170
Private collection, Melbourne; possibly purchased from the above
Australian and International Art, Sotheby's, Melbourne, 28 November 2005, lot 9
Private collection, Melbourne; purchased from the above

Ralph Balson Memorial Exhibition, Gallery A, Sydney, October 1967, cat. 31
Ralph Balson: a retrospective, Heide Park and Art Gallery, Melbourne, 15 August - 24 September 1989 (and touring), cat. 47

Brian Adams, Ralph Balson: a retrospective, Heide Park and Art Gallery, Melbourne, 1989

There is a minor spot of paint loss (upper left hand corner). UV inspection confirms there has been no retouching. This work is in good stable condition.
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When Ralph Balson arrived in Australia from his native England in 1913, he worked as a house painter for years before attending night classes at the Sydney Art School under Julian Ashton, Grace Crowley, Anne Dangar and Henry Gibbons.  Despite the acclaim for his exhibition at the Anthony Horderns' Gallery in 1941 as the first non-figurative one-man show in Australia, he did not paint full time until 1955 or travel overseas until five years after that.  Crowley had studied in Paris in the 1920s; and Balson soon also met Frank Hinder, who had worked in the United States 1927 - 1934.  Balson, Crowley, Hinder and Rah Fizelle became the acknowledged leaders of Australian abstract painting.

The present work, Non-objective painting (1956) is characteristic of the more painterly-expressionist form of abstraction he adopted after visiting the exhibition French Painting Today that toured all Australian state galleries in 1953.  He was also inspired in his 'Non-objective' series by the stream-of-consciousness writing of James Joyce; and fascinated with the implications of atomic physics.  Non-objective painting is a fine example from this series, where 'fields of wavering, kaleidoscopic colour dance across an animated surface.'¹  Between 1949 and 1959 Balson conducted classes in abstract painting at the East Sydney Technical College, before his year away in England, France and the USA.  In his later works, the 'Matter Paintings', he was inspired particularly by Jackson Pollock.  Balson is represented in public and private collections throughout Australia.

1.  N. Wilson in Barry Pearce (ed.), Parallel Visions, Works from the Australian Collection, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2002, pp. 94, 101