Barbara Brash was part of a key generation of influential women artists who made a significant contribution to the Modernist printmaking revival in the 1950s and 60s.
Beginning her artistic career under the National Gallery School’s first Modernist instructor, Alan Sumner in 1946, the analytical approach taught by the Gallery School assisted her to find her simplistic, rich, and dynamic style.
Harbour 1954
linocut 5/20
25 x 28cm
Sold for $4000
Her efforts and creative endeavours enabled her to enrol at the George Bell School, where she formed close relationships with fellow women artists such as Dorothy Braund and Evelyn Syme. The school proved to be a significant influence on her creativity, where she was able experiment with multiple mediums, enabling her to become one of the most prominent printmakers of her generation.
Throughout her career, Brash was consistently testing the boundaries of the printed medium and embracing the potential abstract forms through the use of colour, gesture, and texture in her impressions. Her work spans a variety of printmaking techniques. Her early examples largely focus on linocut and etching; techniques that are aesthetically within the classical Modernist tradition. The linocuts created during this period are arguably some of the artist’s best works and these examples can be seen across many institutions and collections today.
During the 1950s, Brash created some of her most powerful and desired linocut prints. Leonard Joel has been fortuitous to feature many of Brash’s works across the years including Harbour 1954, a wonderful example of the artist’s use of the linocut technique.
HANNAH RYAN / Prints & Multiples Specialist
Banner Image: BARBARA BRASH (1925-1998), Red Bridge c.1955, linocut, 15 x 20.5cm | $1,000-1,500
July 2021