Master of Stillness:
Jeffrey Smart paintings 1940 – 2011

TarraWarra Museum of Art in partnership with the Samstag Museum of Art presents Master of Stillness: Jeffrey Smart paintings 1940 – 2011, a major survey exhibition of over forty paintings from one of Australia’s most important living painters.

Smart’s work has been a part of Australian culture for more than half a century. The painter’s iconic urban landscapes have seeped into our national consciousness, and are among our most famous and beloved paintings. Smart is Australia’s master of the urban vision; seeing beauty in the landscapes of modernism, his works feature industrial wastelands and concrete streetscapes with precise attention to clean lines, composition, geometry, and inherent points of stillness in a world of technology and architecture.

As the exhibition curator Barry Pearce observes, ‘Jeffrey Smart created an entirely new vernacular of modern painting. He confronted a brave new universe of technology and architecture and declared that it was beautiful. He became its poet.’

This major exhibition gives due recognition to Smart’s exceptional achievements over a long life in art, and his exemplary contribution to Australian painting. This large range of works illuminates the remarkably consistent architectonic qualities that underpin Smart’s oeuvre, and a sustained vision that has enhanced his reputation over six decades.