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Robert Dickerson was born in Sydney in 1924. Dickerson achieved public recognition in the 1950s as a prominent member of the 'Antipodean Group'. His work was included in the controversial Antipodean Exhibition in Melbourne in 1959.
The figures that Dickerson paints are highly stylised and distinguishable with elongated angular features. He places his figures in foreboding urban environments that typify loss and poverty, a symptom of the years of post-war depression in Australia.
Dickerson represents the working-class man, the punter; many of the studies show an inherent loneliness and anxiety, many of the studies drawn from Dickerson's observations of daily life.
"Dickerson paints the most uncompromising pictures of oddly evocative figures, fore-touched by the atom age, human who, you feel, have existed through all sort of trails and tribulations, by a cunning, and at the same time pathetic naivet? which produces a most direct sympathy in us", Hal Missingham - Director of AGNSW from 1945-1971, Robert Dickerson, 'Against the Tide', by Jennifer Dickerson, Pandanus Press, 1994, pp68 + 70.
Dickerson moved to Queensland in the late 1960s, where in 1971, he extended his works in charcoal to commence working with coloured chalk pastel. Some dealers of Dickerson's work at the time rejected the drawings and even went so far as to glue the pastels on paper to board and coat them with a varnish as a disguised oil painting. Considering the treatment of his work and the carcinogenic dust emitted from the chalk technique, Dickerson now rarely works in this method.
Savill Galleries has a long association with Robert Dickerson's work and will consider the purchase of any authentic Dickerson painting or drawing held in public or private collections. |
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