SALKAUSKAS, HENRY (1925-1979)

"Study For A Landscape" (1968)
watercolour
cm
signed lower left
*private collection, Sydney
 
Salkauskas was a leading, award-winning Lithuanian-born Australian Abstract Expressionist. Trained at the L’Ecole des Arts et Metiers in Paris and then at the Freiburg university from 1946-49, he emigrated to Sydney in 1949, in the first wave of European Immigrant artists following World War II. Much like iconic American painter, Jackson Pollock, Salkauskas found it hard to make a living as an artist, so he turned to house painting, a trade that was more easily understood by the locals. Nevertheless he found a sympathetic artistic community in Sydney in the circle around the Contemporary Art Society. He quickly established himself as one of Australia's premier abstract expressionists, winning over 60 awards and exhibiting widely throughout Australia alongside important contemporaries such as John Olsen, Peter Upward and Eva Kubbos. His works are represented in most significant institutions such as the Art Gallery of NSW and the National Gallery in Canberra. This early, impressive abstract expressionist piece was exhibited in one of his first exhibitions in 1960!!