Roger Kemp Australian, 1908-1987

David and Zina Steeman Collection, Melbourne

Fine Australian and International Paintings, Sotheby's, Sydney, 27 August 2001, lot 27; purchased by the present owner

Private collection, Melbourne

Roger Kemp was arguably one of this country’s greatest abstract painters. Having studied at the National Gallery School in Melbourne from 1933 to 1935 and at the Melbourne Technical College, economic necessity meant he worked in factories for some years, unable to paint full-time. Even in early exhibitions in the 1940s he had developed his own unique vision as an artist. As his mentor George Bell wrote at that time, ‘The work shown is definitely in the idiom of today. There is little emphasis on representation, the aesthetic import rightly receiving its due in the essence of the expression’.¹ In later years, he was able to study and work in London and New York; received the prestigious McCaughey Prize in 1961, with much increased public recognition. In 1978 his seventieth birthday was celebrated with four simultaneous major exhibitions: at Realities Gallery, the Monash and Melbourne University Galleries and the National Gallery of Victoria. During his personally modest but professionally highly distinguished career, he was awarded numerous important art prizes and honours including an OBE in 1978, Life Membership of the National Gallery of Victoria, 1984, and the Painters and Sculptors Award for outstanding contribution to Australian art, 1986. He was appointed Officer in the Order of Australia (OA) in 1987.

On one level, compositions such as Movement in Space may seem disarmingly simple; and yet Kemp’s geometric forms are alive rather than static, filled with dynamic energy. His palette is deliberately limited and often structured within a framework reminiscent of stained-glass art. His imagery can be read as both micro- and macrocosmic: from an intimation of beauty in cellular or crystalline structure, to the great forces that make up the universe.


1. The Sun, 5 June 1945; quoted in Moore, F. St J., Classical Modernism: the George Bell Circle, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1992, p. 116. Bell was never Kemp’s teacher but was a supporter and invited him to join the Melbourne Contemporary Artists group.