Description:


GEORGE BALDESSIN
(1939 - 1978)
WOMAN WITH FLOWERS, 1976
conte, charcoal and acrylic on paper
75.0 x 56.0 cm (sheet)
80.5 x 63.0 cm (frame)
signed lower centre: George Baldessin

PROVENANCE
Stuart Gerstman Galleries, Melbourne
Private collection, Melbourne, acquired from the above on 16 May 1989
Thence by descent
Private collection, Melbourne

EXHIBITED
May Exhibition 1989: Paintings, Drawings, Prints
, Stuart Gerstman Galleries, Melbourne, 10 May - 2 June 1989 (illus. on exhibition catalogue cover) 

ESSAY
Despite only having an exhibiting career of just 14 short years – from the time of his first solo exhibition at Melbourne’s Argus Gallery in 1964 to his death in a car accident in 1978, George Baldessin’s work endures, continuing to resonate with audiences who have been able to experience his practice in a variety of new exhibition contexts and through new research.1 Baldessin’s work remains fresh and contemporary, and the highly personal and interconnected iconography of his printmaking, drawings and sculpture have ensured that he now holds an established position in the history of recent Australian art.

Baldessin began attending the Lacourière lithographic printworks three days a week in 1976 while he was living abroad in Paris, and it was during his time at this studio that he commenced his iconic MM of Rue St Denis charcoal drawings (1975 – 76). These combined his interest in medieval images of the Mary Magdalene with the contemporary scenes of prostitutes he was witnessing on the city’s streets.2 Significantly, Baldessin made Woman with Flowers, 1976 around this time, and the work’s unidentified subject shares much with his depictions of the Mary Magdalene. As the artist said of his MM drawings: ‘…I’m always trying to work out ways to animate the figure, that is fragmenting, breaking it up in some way and I always look for a real way, an existing way. I don’t want to impose formal ways of fragmenting the forms in the way that the cubists would or the expressionists and so on. I would always look for a natural way of fragmenting the forms of the figure and at the same time bringing the notion of the Madeleine to life.’3

With her somewhat awkward pose and crossed arms, and her voluptuous form evident through her striped dress, Baldessin’s subject is an intriguing and complex embodiment of her own sexual freedom and the objectification of male desire. While she is seemingly offered up to the viewer for our consumption and delight, she nevertheless understands what the game is here, and she is knowingly playing her part. Moreover, the image’s shallow depth of field reveals the importance of printmaking to Baldessin, and the way in which elements of his chosen mediums coalesced and informed each work regardless of how they were made.

1. The most recent of these was the National Gallery of Victoria’s 2018 exhibition Baldessin / Whiteley: Parallel Visions; see Grishin, S., Baldessin/Whiteley Parallel Visions, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2018
2. Lindsay, R. & Holloway, M.J., George Baldessin: Sculpture and Etchings, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1983, p. 21
3. Grishin, op. cit, p. 112

© George Baldessin/Copyright Agency 2024

This work is located in our Melbourne Gallery

    Condition:
  • This work is in excellent, stable and near original condition.
    This work is framed under Perspex.
    The work has been viewed out of its frame and is not laid down but hinged in the corners to a black paper support.
    We would recommend the work be re-hinged.

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