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Lot 60

Clifton Pugh
(1924-1990)
Migratory Birds, 1958

22 September 2019, 13:00 AEST

Sydney, Woollahra

Sold for AU$36,600 inc. premium

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Clifton Pugh (1924-1990)

Migratory Birds, 1958
signed and dated lower right: 'Clifton / MAY '58'
titled verso: 'MIGRATORY BIRDS'
oil on composition board
92.0 x 138.0cm (36 1/4 x 54 5/16in).

Footnotes

PROVENANCE
Collection of the late Sir Warwick and Lady Fairfax, Sydney

EXHIBITED
After Fire, Collins Street Gallery, Melbourne, 25 August - 5 September 2009

LITERATURE
Noel MacAinsh, Clifton Pugh, Australian Art Monographs, Melbourne, 1962, pl. 6 (illus. and cover)
Sally Morrison, After Fire, A Biography of Clifton Pugh, Hardie Grant, Melbourne, 2009, pl. 4 (illus.)

In her biography on the artist, Sally Morrison wrote of this work, 'This is an early Pugh which demonstrates the technique he chose to convey his own intimate experience of the bush with those who looked at his paintings. Against a background of steep-sided, challenging masses that might be mountains, Pugh has painted his birds all facing in the direction of migration, whilst on the surface of the work the blades on the reeds through which we see the birds point in both directions across the picture plane, signalling that migration is a decision to leave, counterbalanced by a decision to stay. By dividing the painting up into these three planes, Pugh is following the precepts of the German Expressionists who participated in the early twentieth century exhibition called The Bridge. They believed that painting should be from the heart and that the painter should communicate with the viewer through the 'bridge' of the picture plane. Pugh read about the German Expressionists when he was a young soldier on the Kokoda Trail. Whilst on the trail he painted on everything he could, including some tent flaps he hacked off for the purpose.'

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