Deutscher and Hackett

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Cottages in Worth Matravers, Dorset
photographer unknown

Dorrit Black was a pioneer of Australian modernism. In London and Paris during the late 1920s she studied with key international figures, learning about contemporary developments in modern art at their source. At home – in both Adelaide and Sydney – she later shared her experiences, disseminating her knowledge and making a significant contribution to the evolution of the local iteration of modernism. A newspaper article published after her return in 1929 declared: ‘Miss Black… is a modern of moderns, and is all for the new school of painting’¹ which, as she went on to explain, ‘does not aim at realism, [but] is founded on design, harmony, and rhythm in forms.’²

Black’s formal art education began at the Adelaide School of Design, and she undertook private watercolour painting lessons with Gwen Barringer before moving interstate to continue her studies at Julian Ashton’s Sydney Art School. It is likely that Black was introduced to the techniques of linocut printmaking by Thea Proctor, but her deepest engagement with the medium began in late 1927 at the Grosvenor School in London where she attended classes with Claude Flight, a passionate advocate for the colour linocut which he regarded as the modern medium for the modern age. Studying with Flight for several months, Black absorbed his example of the use of bold colour, the reduction of subject matter to simplified shapes, and patterns based on a dynamic system of opposing rhythmic lines and forms. Critical recognition of her efforts in the medium came early, with The pot plant, 1933 being purchased by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

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Dorrit Black
Mirmande (with surrounding hills), 1934
oil on canvas on paperboard
35.6 x 45.9 cm
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Encouraged by her friends and fellow-artists, Anne Dangar and Grace Crowley, Black left London for Paris at the end of 1927, her intention being ‘to acquire a definite understanding of the aims and methods of the modern movement and, in particular – of the Cubists.’³ Her primary teacher in this undertaking was André Lhote, whose academy in Montparnasse (and summer school at Mirmande in the south of France) attracted students from all around the world. Lhote’s approach to Cubism incorporated the theory of dynamic symmetry and compositional principles based on the golden mean. Subjects were simplified according to geometry and organised into flattened, planar arrangements. As Black wrote, ‘He judges the work from standards of rhythm, balance, proportion and line, and applies these standards to its three properties – form, tone and colour.’⁴ Her understanding progressed further in mid-1929 when she and Crowley attended a series of classes with Albert Gleizes whose teaching ‘offered… a bridge from cubism to pure abstraction: from the static to the dynamic.’⁵

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Dorrit Black
House-roofs and flowers, 1935
(painted London, England)
oil on canvas 50.2 x 38.0 cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Dorset cottages, 1935 was painted during an extensive overseas trip between March 1934 and September 1935 during which Black travelled with her mother in Continental Europe, England, Scotland, Wales, the United States and Canada. The places they visited sometimes feature in Black’s work, from Mirmande (with surrounding hills), 1934 (Art Gallery of New South Wales) to The mountain lake, 1935 (National Gallery of Victoria), a linocut depicting a view from Neuschwanstein Castle in the foothills of the Alps in the south of Germany. Black reconnected with friends during the trip and in the summer of 1934, she joined Claude Flight and his partner, Edith Lawrence, on a sketching holiday in Dorset. ‘I had one of the most enjoyable times of my life down there, such an awfully jolly & interesting lot of people. Claude got me painting rapid watercolour sketches most of the time, though I did do some of my usual careful constructed & deliberate oils.’⁶