In the 1950s and ’60s, several artists found that Rome was reinvigorating their abstract sensibilities. Willem de Kooning is perhaps the most famous example, taking up clay sculpture during a visit to the city in 1969, but the same is true of the Australian artist Janet Dawson, who made the pilgrimage in the late 1950s and left Rome with a clutch of abstract drawings inspired by the surrounding landscape. After spending some time in Paris, where she made a number of energetic abstract lithographs, Dawson returned to Australia, committed to exploring the possibilities of non-figurative painting. But over the next six decades her paintings changed significantly, moving from pure abstraction to more figurative work; after she and her husband moved to rural New South Wales, she grew particularly interested in rendering fruits, vegetables and rocks. This exhibition, the artist’s first major retrospective, captures the sweep of her career (19 July–18 January 2026).
Find out more from the Art Gallery of New South Wales’s website.
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