Although living permanently in Australia since 1966, Yvonne Audette’s contribution to Australian modernism remained largely ignored until the late 1990s.
Read MoreBorn in Sydney, Audette initially studied at the Julian Ashton School (1948-52) and was introduced to the work of Cézanne by her tutor, John Passmore. In 1952 she moved to New York, acquiring direct experience of Abstract Expressionism and meeting with artists such as Mark Rothko and Lee Krasner while studying at the National Academy of Design (1954 -1955). Following her graduation, Audette travelled to Italy, establishing a studio in Milan and completing a series of structured, painterly abstract works, orchestrating the picture plane as a surface for measured and intuitive gestures.
Like de Kooning, Audette’s abstract paintings evoke a series of possible narratives and the artist has described the transparency of her painted surfaces from the 1950s as layers of time and memories or visual musical scores. In 1999 the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, held a survey show of her New York and European paintings, acknowledging her significant contribution to post-war abstraction in Australia.
Audette is represented in the collections work of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne and the National Gallery of Australia amongst others.
