Untitled painting 1963
Synthetic polymer on board
Signed and dated “RL63” lower right
98.0 x 61.5 cm
Provenance
Private collection, Sydney
Deutscher Fine Art, Melbourne
Richard Larter was born in London. After the Second World War he studied at
St Martin’s School, “drawing plaster casts incessantly because he
then held, as he has said, a fundamentalist attitude to art - believing that
if one desired to be an artist one should first learn to draw accurately ”.
Later he became influenced by American abstract expressionism but soon became
disillusioned with that style and returned for a time, to “academic drawing” from
which he evolved“ a personalised kind of Pop art”. In 1962, ill and
suffering from “cold English winters”, he migrated to Australia.
His creative process at that time involved both thought and accident, collage
and painting. In 1971 Bernard Smith observed:“ [He] draws prolifically,
cutting up his sketches and arranging them on a floor or table until he hits
upon something worth keeping. ”Instead of a brush, Larter used syringes, “pressing
out a calligraphy of continuous lines...oil paint was avoided, being replaced
by polyvinyl acetate and epoxy resins”.
His frequent use of the naked female figure in his works, was “as much
a personal symbol for him as it was for Norman Lindsay”. He favoured “bizarre,
grotesque, often obscene attitudes”. However, the figure was not the main
focus. Larter is quoted as saying“...‘The figure is a splash in the
middle of the hardboard.’”
Exhibited
Deutscher Fine Art, Melbourne: A Selection of 19th and 20th Century Australian
Art, November – December 1989,
cat.no.100
Represented
National Gallery of Australia
National Gallery of Victoria
The Art Gallery of New South Wales
Art Gallery of South Australia
Art Gallery of Western Australia
Museum of Contemporary Art, Brisbane
Institutional and private collections throughout Australia
Reference
Smith, Bernard 1971, Australian Painting: 1788 – 1970, Oxford University
Press, Melbourne, pp.402 –3.
