Grace Cossington Smith 'The
Bridge in building' 1929-30
Gift of Ellen Waugh 2005
Grace Cossington Smith is widely
regarded as one of Australia's most
significant modernist artists. Her
works of the late 1920s and early
1930s reveal a daring, adventurous
spirit. For Cossington Smith, as for
many artists at the time, the
building of the Sydney Harbour
Bridge was the source of much
excitement and inspiration. She
tackled it with extraordinary vigour
in drawings and in some of the best
paintings ever made of the subject,
including The Bridge in building.
Cossington Smith's favourite
position to view the bridge was at
Milson's Point on the North Shore,
the location of this painting. She
has adopted a very low viewpoint and
the main focus is the enormous pylon
and arc rearing up into the sky, as
well as the radiating colour and
light.
The modernist icon of the Harbour
Bridge was an ideal subject for
Cossington Smith. The work reveals
the artist's feeling for
architecture and the geometry of the
bridge, with its complex structural
components. The two giant arms
reaching across the water towards
each other convey a sense of the awe
that many felt at the tremendous
presence of this structure coming
into being, evoking a new era of
hope and possibility.
Text © National Gallery of
Australia, Canberra 2010
From: Ron Radford (ed), Collection
highlights:
National Gallery of Australia,
Canberra, 2008
Uploaded by
NationalGalleryAus
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