One hundred years ago this year, acclaimed Australian artist Jeffrey Smart was born in Adelaide.
His works have been shown across the world, inspiring authors and artists alike — and now, a new exhibition in his honour is set to open at the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) in Canberra.
From tomorrow, the walls of the NGA will be lined with an appropriately-numbered 100 pieces, hand-picked from public lenders and private collectors as well as from within the National Gallery's collection.
The exhibition is designed to take the audience on a journey through Smart's main bodies of work.
"[It] isn't necessarily a retrospective. However, it does step you through the three main bodies of work that he undertook," NGA director Nick Mitzevich said.
"His work in Adelaide, then his experimentation and really honing his craft based in Sydney, and then the paintings that he undertook in the latter part of his life from Italy."
Smart was indeed profoundly influenced by his South Australian upbringing, and many of his pieces centred around those landscapes.
"It would be fair to say that the unique shape and light of these South Australian landscapes, together with my fascination for city motifs, formed the alpha and omega of the way I would continue to see the world through my painting," Barry Pearce quotes him as saying in his 2012 book, Master of Stillness: Jeffrey Smart.
But inspiration often also struck Smart when he was not looking for it.
Later in life, he confessed to loving "everything Italian".
"I like the offhand way of them. I like the language, and I love spaghetti, and I love the Italian painting, and I like the Italian way of life," he told Michael Maher for Foreign Correspondent.
Mr Mitzevich promised visitors to the exhibition would witness "an evolution of Jeffrey Smart's paintings from his early days in Adelaide in the 1940s, all the way through to the last painting he undertook in 2011 before his death in 2013".
Alongside the landscapes he is so known for, Smart's final work, Labyrinth, will be on display at the NGA, as well as several portraits and some of his early works.
'His view on the world was quite unique'
Mr Mitzevich described Smart as "a master at the height of his game".
"Jeffrey Smart is an artist that, during the 20th century, really chartered a course of his own," he said.
"His work never fell into any traps of jingoism or provincialism, it always had a great clarity and [gave] us a very clear and new look about the modern world, and that's why his highways, these urban landscapes, the figures that are depicted in his paintings, are so startling and draw us in.
"The landscapes that he depicted are familiar but also eerie. So we're captivated by them."
One such landscape is the Cahill Expressway, painted in 1962 and showing a lone figure standing, almost out-of-context, under a very familiar landscape.
"The fact that Jeffrey Smart gives us these landscapes and cityscapes that don't give us all the answers means that we're intrigued to kind of join the dots," Mr Mitzevich said.
The exhibition, which was delayed because of COVID-19, will open on Saturday, December 11 and run until May 15, 2022.
"We've got strategies in place to make sure the experience is a COVID-safe experience. And numbers are limited to make sure that we give everyone a sense of comfort and keep everyone safe," Mr Mitzevich said.
"So my advice is book early, come in and see the show and if you love it, come back at the latter part of the season."
