JON MOLVIG

Rudy Komon Gallery, Sydney
Collection of Raymond and Diana Kidd; purchased from the above in June 1967

Jon Molvig 1950-1960, Rudy Komon Gallery, Sydney, 1960, cat. 7
A Decade of John Molvig, Argus Gallery, Melbourne, October 22 - November 2 1962, cat. 22
Jon Molvig, Rudy Komon Gallery, Sydney, 10-27 August 1966, cat. 14
Rudy Komon Gallery, Sydney, April 1984, cat. 5, in association with the launch of Molvig: The Lost Antipodean by Betty Churcher
John Molvig, Expressionist, Newcastle Regional Art Gallery August 2002 - May 2003

Betty Churcher, Molvig: The Last Antipodean, Allen Lane/Penguin Books, Melbourne, 1984, cat. 154, p. 133

This work is presented in a gold and black simple timber frame. Two areas of circular paint loss approximately 2mm in diameter each upper left and lower left. There are fine areas of drying cracks across the surface of the work.
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Brisbane painter Jon Molvig was one of Australia's most important figurative expressionists. He died relatively young, and his reputation was to a certain extent overshadowed by his Melbourne co-stylists – Betty Churcher subtitled her 1984 monograph 'the Lost Antipodean' – but Molvig was nevertheless a strong presence in the national art scene throughout the late 1950s and 1960s, both as an artist and as a tough, uncompromising personality.

In the first part of his career he adopted an assertive, even aggressive painting style. The relatively early Passengers is a fine example , with its cast of ghostly, staring figures, its acid colour and its thickly-encrusted paint surface; this is a work very much in the northern European expressionist tradition. Molvig's works from the second half of the 1960s – many influenced by Aboriginal bark painting -  were similarly dynamic, if very much more abstract, open and lyrical.