Robert Jacks AO (1943–2014) is acknowledged as one of Australia's leading abstract artists. He studied at the Prahran Technical College from 1958 to 1960 and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology from 1961 to 1962, focusing first on sculpture and then painting and printmaking. He travelled to Canada in 1967, and in 1969 relocated to New York, living in this nexus of the avant-garde, and working with notable conceptual and abstract artists such as Sol LeWitt. In 1978 Jacks became artist-in-residence at the University of Melbourne before moving to Sydney, where he taught at Sydney's College of the Arts. Back in Melbourne by 1983, he continued to work and teach, and ultimately settled on a rural property near Harcourt in central Victoria. Jacks developed a unique visual language that incorporated colour field theory, pure form, geometrics, text and semiotics, and conceptual art. He maintained a prolific and consistent output throughout his career, exhibiting often. Jacks is represented in many major public, corporate and private Australian collections, and internationally, across which hundreds of his works are held. The National Gallery of Victoria collected their first work by Jacks in 1965, and he was included in the gallery's inaugural exhibition at its St Kilda Road premises, The Field in 1968. In 2015 NGV hosted a major survey of his work. Jacks was fully involved in the plans for the retrospective, until soon before his death in 2014.
