CHARLES BLACKMAN Nude and Flowers
Nude and Flowers is an incarnation of the new and unfettered attitude that Charles Blackman brought to his art after his return to Sydney from London in 1966. Nude and Flowers is a triumph of colour harmony. It plays upon simplicity and the complementary nature of green and orange pigments. In Nude and Flowers, Blackman explores the themes of disconnectedness and isolation. He turns the woman’s head away from the centre of the picture plane, shadowing her features are shadows and erasing her eyes completely. Nude and Flowers shows clear influences the art of Modernist masters such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Marc Chagall, all of whose works are among those he would have seen in London. These works, like Blackman’s, are driven by the need to express emotion and experience with complete freedom in terms of composition, form, colour and space.