Albert TuckerMarking the Past
Albert Tucker, Mourning Disciples 1955, oil on composition board, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Donated through the Australian Cultural Gifts Program by Barbara Tucker 2015 © Albert & Barbara Tucker Foundation, courtesy of Smith & Singer Fine Art
While living in Italy in the 1950s Albert Tucker embarked on a new chapter in his artistic practice. Inspired by early Christian and Renaissance art, he painted biblical narratives about resurrection, rebirth and overcoming adversity. It was a time of self-discovery that led him to explore the Australian landscape from a new perspective, relating the fissures of the outback to the idea of physical and emotional scars. It was only years later that he recognised a link between these works and his drawings of traumatised World War II soldiers. This exhibition presents a selection of Tucker’s religious paintings alongside his wounded landscapes, explorers and earlier studies of soldiers, drawing aesthetic and conceptual connections between these bodies of work.