The pot plant

In this linocut 1930s modernism is laced with a local Australian twist. Sydney artist Dorrit Black has chosen a gum tree as the subject of her print – its round gumnuts and flat leaves offer sleek structure at the centre of an abstracted, geometric composition.

Dorrit Black was born in Adelaide in 1891. After studying at the South Australian School of Arts and Crafts, she moved to Sydney in 1915, and then London in 1927. Black enrolled at London’s Grosvenor School of Art, where she learned the modern technique of linocutting. Over the next two years she studied cubism at the school of French painter André Lhote. Her work became increasingly abstracted and experimental, characterised by geometric forms, flattened space, and a dynamic play of colour and line.

Black returned to Sydney in 1929. In 1931 she became Australia’s first woman gallerist when she opened a gallery called the Modern Art Centre. In a draft speech for the opening Black wrote: ‘Realistic painting has proved to be a blind alley. We have reached the end of that alley and been obliged to turn around and retrace our steps. Now we have started on the new track, and already find it rich in new discoveries.’

Reference: Opening speech quoted in Lara Nicholls, ‘Dorrit Black’ in N Bullock, K Cole, D Hart & E Pitt (eds), Know My Name (Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 2020), pp 46–47.