Roy De Maistre: The Australian Years, 1894-1930

AUSTRALIAN ART

Roy De Maistre CBE (27 March 1894 – 1 March 1968) was an Australian artist of international fame. He is renowned in Australian art for his early experimentation with “colour-music”, and is recognised as the first Australian artist to use pure abstraction. His later works were painted in a figurative style generally influenced by Cubism. His Stations of the Cross series hangs in Westminster Cathedral and works of his are hung in the Tate Gallery, London and in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.

Roy De Maistre is something of an enigma in Australian art. He has been acknowledged as Australia’s first abstract painter, but what little else is known of him has been largely based on myth rather than fact.

Heather Johnson’s text accompanies and introduces the paintings, and the life of the Australian-born artist before he moved permanently to England in 1930.

138 p. : ill. (some col.), ports. ; 35 cm. First Edition. #080723 SCARCE

De Maistre, Roy, 1894-1968.  |  Painting, Modern — 20th century — Australia.