Yvonne Audette
VAULT celebrates the work of one of Australia’s greatest women painters, Yvonne Audette, whose celebrated career has spanned some seventy years.
Image credit: Yvonne Audette, Evening Landscape, 1967, oil on plywood, 152 x 114 cm. Courtesy Charles Nodrum Gallery, Melbourne © Yvonne Audette
Yvonne Audette’s artistic experience and influence span three continents and involvement with many of the 20th century’s greatest artists. From the start of her training in Australia, she has pursued art making and the development of her mode of expression without compromise. Chris Wallace-Crabbe describes her as “one of the two or three greatest abstract painters Australia has produced; perhaps the very finest.”
Now aged 93, and recently represented by Charles Nodrum Gallery, Audette’s work was the focus of their Melbourne Art Fair stand in February 2024. The quality of her paintings and gouaches attracted intense interest. People responded to her distinctive and structured aesthetic, many without prior knowledge of her practice, and the selected works from 1956 to 1978 sold well. Incredibly, given Audette’s accomplishments, her prices remain accessible.
Audette’s Concerto for Harpsichord and Flute (1966–68) is a sumptuous example of her mature style, using calligraphic marks and vertical brushstrokes to create the surface as a poetic masterclass in abstraction that weaves space and light together with strength and athleticism. Painted shortly after her return to Australia from Italy, it glories in the light and space of her then-Sydney base. Evening Landscape (1967) takes the muted tones of the sky in the late afternoon, including urban elements through muscular graffitied marks. The lively composition captures the rapid movement of the city within its shapes, lines and pictorial depths.
Audette was only 22 years old when she left Australia, travelling to New York in 1952 to further her art ... Subscribe to read this article in full
