Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, September 22, 2025 : Dorrit Black, an Australian painter and printmaker (#2372)

Monday, September 22, 2025

Artist of the Day, September 22, 2025 : Dorrit Black, an Australian painter and printmaker (#2372)

Dorothea Foster Black (1891 – 1951) was an Australian painter and printmaker of the Modernist school, known for being a pioneer of Modernism in Australia. In 1951, at the age of fifty-nine, Black was killed in a car crash.

Dorrit Black was born in the Adelaide suburb of Burnside, the daughter of engineer and architect Alfred Barham Black and Jessie Howard Clark, an amateur artist and daughter of John Howard Clark, editor of the South Australian Register. She attended the South Australian School of Arts and Crafts in about 1909, working in watercolors, and attended the Julian Ashton Art School in Sydney in 1915, concentrating on working in oils.

In 1927, Black went by herself to London and attended the Grosvenor School of Modern Art, where she experimented with color linocut printing while studying under Claude Flight. Black was influenced by Flight to use bold geometrical patterns and harmonious color schemes.

Black was strongly influenced by the Modernist and Cubist art movements she was exposed to in London and Paris. By the time she returned to her home country in late 1929, Black had become an active proponent of the Cubist style, and brought the styles back to Australia with her.

Black was interested in creating an environment that would enable others to work in the new style. She established the Modern Art Centre in Sydney in 1931, the first gallery in Australia to devote itself to modernism. It was also one of the first galleries in Australia to be established by a woman. Over the next few years, the Modern Art Centre became a "source of inspiration and opening to a wider vision" to artists such as Nancy Hall.

Black's lino-prints were integral to her arts practice. "She captured the energy of the modern age." As she grew older "the vitality of the natural world" became fundamental.

Black is noted for her 1930 painting The Bridge, showing the Sydney Harbour Bridge as it was being constructed, before the arch was joined. The Bridge was painted in jewel-like colours such as aquamarine and “shimmering peacock” and was Australia’s first Cubist landscape.

On returning to Adelaide, Black taught part-time at the South Australian School of Art. She was a member of the South Australian Society of Arts and the Contemporary Art Society.

Women were trailblazers of Modernism in Australia, and Black is recognised as "a prime force in educating Australians in the appreciation of modern art."

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