JOHN OLSEN

Rudy Komon Gallery, Sydney
Bank of New South Wales
Fine Australian Paintings, Sotheby’s, Melbourne, 17 April 1989, lot 456
Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne
Private collection, Melbourne; purchased from the above in 1991

The sixties were vintage years for John Olsen. Introduced by the grand Spanish Encounter, 1960 in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the star-studded decade produced the brilliant 'You Beaut Country' series, Entrance to the Siren City of the Rat Race, 1963 and related Sydney works, the ceiling paintings Summer in the You Beaut Country, 1962 (National Gallery of Victoria), and Life Burst, 1964 (Newcastle Region Art Gallery), and more memorable paintings such as Portugese Kitchen No.1, 1966, and Love in the Kitchen, 1969, to mention a few of the highlights. There were also the first tapestries, Olsen's art and life summed up in Joie de Vivre, 1964, woven at the Portalegre Tapestry Workshop in Portugal.

In the Garden pulsates with the rhythm of life typical of Olsen's work at this time. Wallace Thornton thought his 1965 solo show the 'most joyful exhibition to be seen in Sydney in recent memory'. ¹ Another fellow-artist-critic, James Gleeson, described Olsen's art as 'singing, shouting and exulting in the joy of living', and continued: 'It is an earthy acceptance of earth's riches, a Dionysian revel of all the senses, a festival to celebrate the harvesting of countless grains of nourishing experience'. ² The same inspiration permeates this painting, an aerial topography of a landscape of fruitfulness. Immediate engagement comes through its rich colours, contours and ceaseless movement, its mood of enthusiasm inviting the same response.

1. Thornton, W., The Sydney Morning Herald, 21 April 1965, p. 15.
2. Gleeson, J., The Sun-Herald, Sydney, 25 April 1965, p. 76.