Abstraction-CréationJ.W Power in Europe 1921-1938

Power trained in medicine but after serving as a doctor in World War I he turned to art, joining the London Group before studying in Paris with Fernand Léger at his Académie Moderne in the mid-1920s. Identified as part of the so-called École Rosenberg after his dealer Léonce Rosenberg and the post-cubist painters he represented, in 1931 Power joined the international group of abstract artists known as Abstraction–Création. As the Parisian home for the migrating European avant-garde throughout the 1930s, Abstraction–Création’s membership included artists such as Piet Mondrian, Josef Albers and Barbara Hepworth.

An artist equally at home in London, Paris and Brussels, Power’s inveterate cosmopolitanism led to a unique style of painting: part abstract-surrealism, part surreal-abstraction, part psychedelic fantasy, combining organic forms and elaborate geometries.

This exhibition recreates Power’s major solo show, held at Abstraction–Création’s gallery in 1934. It includes fifty major paintings and oil sketches from the Edith Power bequest, University of Sydney, together with his sketchbooks and his collection of Picasso pochoirs held in the National Library of Australia collectio