Add Category
Posted
Adelaide-born painter Sydney Ball, who became a master of abstract impressionism, has died aged 83.
Another Adelaide artist, Lynne Eastaway, who was his former partner and knew him for nearly half a century, said Ball was prolific in his work.
"The day before he died he was talking about all the pictures he'd got ready to go and the next shows," she said.
"[He was] incredibly prolific [in] the amount of the work he turned out and I would say one of Australia's greatest colourists.
"He was a man devoted to his work and to the love of colour. He was a very special person in that regard."
Ball, who was born in 1933, moved to New York in the 1960s where he was exposed to the abstract impressionist movement and the works of artists including Jackson Pollock, John Rothko and Willem de Kooning.
His work featured in the first Australian exhibition of abstract art, the Field Exhibition, in Melbourne in 1968.
A 50th anniversary retrospective of the Field Exhibition is planned for next year in Melbourne.
Many of Ball's significant works have been donated to the Samstag Museum of Art at the University of South Australia.
Its director, Erica Green, said Ball was an inspirational artist and teacher and was her lecturer at Alexander Mackie College of Art in Sydney.
"His big claim to fame was that he was really responsible for bringing back abstract expressionism to Australia," she said.
"He painted works such as Magellan Blue and Pale Stream — these two works were actually painted [on canvases] on the floor, in a similar way to [works by] Jackson Pollock and Helen Frankenthaler."
She said most of Ball's sales and exhibitions were in Australia and this showed his work resonated with Australian audiences.
The Samstag Museum's Ball collection covers more than 50 years of the artist's paintings and drawings, and it is considering mounting a special exhibition to honour his legacy.
Topics: death, community-and-society, painting, visual-art, arts-and-entertainment, adelaide-5000, sa