I’ve just produced a book of modern Australian painting and sculpture which covers the period of Australian art from 1950 to 1960. Since the death of Sidney Ure Smith in the late 40s, there really have been no publications of this nature produced, and I think the reason for this is that in a comparatively small country like Australia, the risk of publishing such a book has been too great for the professional publishing houses to feel that it’s warranted. So it remained to somebody who had the interest of Australian art very much at heart to more or less do the thing because he liked it and wanted to see Australian art more widely known throughout Australia and overseas.
Most of the Australian publicity seems to centre on the more conventional or conservative type of paintings such as Hans Heysen, which we don’t in any way belittle, but we are more concerned with the forward looking painting and sculpture in this country, and we feel that there is a great gap to be bridged with knowledge and what people think about Australian painting overseas, and up to date there has been no book that has even attempted to cover this area.
Therefore, we have sent information literature to galleries, libraries, museums, right throughout the world which we hope will result in this book being made available to a very, very wide number of countries, and thus to the world at large, as to just how vital a school we have here in Australia at the present time.
