Estimated Price:

   $   

Realized Price:

   $   

What is this symbol? This symbol indicates that this auction hose has verified this price result.

Log in or subscribe to view price data

JOHN HENRY OLSEN Born 1928 Mediterranean Still Life 2002 Oil on canvas Signed and dated lower right 147.5 by 162.5 cm Provenance: Metro 5 Gallery, Melbourne Private Collection, Melbourne Exhibited: John Olsen at Metro 5, Metro 5 Gallery, Melbourne, 30 April - 18 May 2003 (Illus. exhibition catalogue pg. 21) Reference: Makin, J, John Olsen at Metro 5, Metro 5 Gallery Melbourne, 2003, pg.10 #The great gift of the Mediterranean,# wrote John Olsen in 1986, ##was that its people had contrived a civilisation in which man and nature were in perfect harmony# It is simple enough, with wine, olives, aubergines, tomatoes# and the ice blue of the Mediterranean itself#. (in D. Hart, John Olsen, Sydney, 1991, p.33). In Mediterranean Still Life, John Olsen offers a tribute to a culture that had profound effects on his life and art from the time of his first visit to the region in 1957. On this first visit he was accompanied by the Belgian artist Guillaume Corneille, a member of the CoBrA group. Together, the two artists explored the possibility of viewing the landscape from numerous perspectives; a technique that allowed Olsen to more fully develop his dominant preoccupation of incorporating into his canvasses as much of the brilliance and variety of life itself as possible. Here, this guiding philosophy is realised with an elegantly restricted palette and economy of line and form. The #ice blue# that forms a border acts as a synecdoche for the sustaining power of water, and for Olsen#s view of the Mediterranean itself as a kind of purifying #bath# for the earth. This forms the perfect foil for the golden square in the upper sections of the canvas, reminiscent of a tablecloth in The Picnic (1963, private collection) and Duck à l#Orange (1981, The Christensen Fund), and here replete with squid and fish. The image also recalls images of Olsen#s Australian landscape in his paintings of 1969, for example The Chasing Bird Landscape (Westpac Banking Corporation collection), with its suggestions of waterways and estuaries, their delicate traceries extending into the sea beyond. For the artist, this duality of meaning would hold no contradiction: Olsen has long recognised the delicate balance in nature while also joyously accepting the earth#s bounty. An elegant metaphor for this balance, Mediterranean Still Life embraces this bounty and is a lyrical testament to the sustaining power and diverse ecology of the ocean and the sensory pleasures associated with good food.