The artist's journey
Moving image: Explore cultures and art making around the world
Moving image: Explore cultures and art making around the world
Robert Jacks is recognised as one of Australia’s most significant abstract artists. During his early career, Robert was influenced by the pioneer of British abstract art, Ben Nicholson.
In the 1960’s Robert Jacks AO was determined to live and work in New York, this film explores that journey and the journey home again. Back in contemporary Melbourne, join Robert Jacks and Anna Schwartz as they set up the exhibition Never Ending Project at Anna Schwartz Gallery.
Born in Melbourne in 1943, Robert trained in sculpture at Prahran College and painting at the RMIT. He held his first solo exhibition in 1966 and was represented in The Field in 1968, the exhibition chosen to launch the new National Gallery of Victoria in St Kilda Road.
He has remained true to the style of his early works, partitioned and bordered colourful abstracts.
Robert lived in Canada and New York from 1969 to 1978, teaching and exhibiting, including at the New York Cultural Centre and the Whitney Museum Artists’ Resource Centre.
Robert held more than 60 solo exhibitions in six countries throughout his career and was included in numerous group exhibitions. He lived and worked in Central Victoria. Robert died in 2014.
Eric Westbrook was an important figure in Robert's life. In my many discussions with Robert he told me about the early days of his career in Melbourne:
“Also the director of the National Gallery of Victoria, Eric Westbrook, bought a painting for the National Gallery of Victoria and he dragged out some of his mates who were trustees to buy paintings by my opening show, so the show was virtually a sell-out.
I think it was the beginning of a lot of things then. The Antipodeans who were around then and friends and enjoying their success and there were very few artists then. They filled a vacuum and then there was my generation, the next generation of young artists who were a mixed bunch of artists and then the National Gallery of Victoria opened in St. Kilda Road. The new building then and that opened with the Field Show, which was an exhibition of artists of my generation that painted in an abstract geographic manner”.
The world can often seem a small place and as it turned out Eric Westbrook also became a friend of Andrea and I some forty years after the opening of the Field Show. Eric was a not infrequent visitor and dinner guest to our house in central Victoria, itself filled with art, and we enjoyed Eric’s company and knowledge of the art world in the closing years of Erics life.