1. Dorothea Foster Black was an Australian painter and printmaker of the Modernist school, known for being a pioneer of Modernism in Australia.
22 Facts About Dorrit Black
1. 2.
In 1951, at the age of fifty-nine, Dorrit Black was killed in a car crash.
3.
Dorrit Black was born in the Adelaide suburb of Burnside, the daughter of engineer and architect Alfred Barham Black and Jessie Howard Clark, an amateur artist and daughter of John Howard Clark, editor of the South Australian Register.
4.
Dorrit Black attended the South Australian School of Arts and Crafts in about 1909, working in watercolours, and attended the Julian Ashton Art School in Sydney in 1915, concentrating on working in oils.
5.
In 1927, Dorrit Black went by herself to London and attended the Grosvenor School of Modern Art, where she experimented with colour linocut printing while studying under Claude Flight.
6.
Dorrit Black was influenced by Flight to use bold geometrical patterns and harmonious colour schemes.
7.
Dorrit Black was influenced by Lhote's "compostional principles of geometric order".
8.
Dorrit Black was strongly influenced by the Modernist and Cubist art movements she was exposed to in London and Paris.
9.
Dorrit Black then held an exhibition at Macquarie Galleries in Sydney in 1930.
10.
Dorrit Black was interested in creating an environment that would enable others to work in the new style.
11.
Dorrit Black established the Modern Art Centre in Margaret Street, Sydney in 1931, the first gallery in Australia to devote itself to modernism.
12.
Dorrit Black worked mainly in water-colours in the late 1930s and then returned to working in oils.
13.
Dorrit Black settled in Adelaide, South Australia, in the late 1930s with her ageing mother, and painted many landscapes of the Adelaide hills and the south coast.
14.
Dorrit Black is noted for her painting of the Sydney Harbour Bridge as it was being constructed.
15.
Dorrit Black was a finalist for the Archibald Prize for portraiture in 1931.
16.
Dorrit Black painted the Sydney Harbour Bridge at various stages of construction.
17.
On returning to Adelaide, Dorrit Black taught part-time at the South Australian School of Art.
18.
Dorrit Black was a member of the South Australian Society of Arts and the Contemporary Art Society.
19.
Dorrit Black died in the Royal Adelaide Hospital on 13 September 1951, at the age of 59, after a car accident.
20.
Dorrit Black has so consistently been artistically cold-shouldered and ignored since her return here about 20 years ago that it is amazing how she maintained the courage to fight on against so much prejudice and misunderstanding.
21.
Dorrit Black's work is represented in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia as well as in many state and regional galleries, and in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
22.
Dorrit Black was represented in the National Gallery of Australia's Know My Name exhibition in 2020.