REINIS ZUSTERS
Reinis Zusters was one of a number of post-war immigrants whose experience of European modernism and expressionism contributed to the development of abstract painting in Australia in the 1960s.
Zusters was born in the Ukraine, attending the Riga Technical College, Latvia (1935-40), and emigrated with his family to Australia in 1950, studying at the National Art School in Sydney (1950-52). He was employed as a draftsman with the Department of Works and Housing in Canberra, resigning in 1968 to work professionally as an artist.
His landscapes of the Blue Mountains and Sydney’s urban environment were characterised by a skilful command of watercolour, oil painting and mixed media with Zusters using an expressive, impasto application of paint and layering washes and glazes in images that have invited comparison with the gestural painting of Jackson Pollock while equally revealing the scale, atmosphere and colour of the Australian landscape.
Zusters was the recipient of the Bronze Prize at the 1990 Osaka Triennale and received the Order of Australia Medal in 1994. Zusters’ work is held in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.
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