Sidney Nolan: Colour of the Sky - Auschwitz Paintings
On 13 August 2021, the Sidney Nolan Trust will open its latest exhibition Sidney Nolan: Colour of the Sky - Auschwitz Paintings in the Trust’s freshly updated gallery space.
During 1961/62 Sidney Nolan was focused on the holocaust, creating a significant number of paintings that are now held in collections including Tate & the Australian War Memorial. The exhibition will present over 30 works from the Trust’s own collection, previously unseen photographs that Nolan took when visiting Auschwitz with the writer and poet Al Alvarez and other sources of reading on the holocaust drawn from Nolan’s personal archive.
Nolan wrote:
“Whether I will do paintings? I am reluctant in a way to dig deeper into Europe but I do not see how the question of the camps can be forever shelved. Perhaps they will never be the material of art, it is impossible to tell. How can a disease be painted?”
Nolan had painted with reference to the camps as early as 1944 but this later body of work appears to have been prompted by the public trial of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi responsible for the deportation of Jews from across Europe. Following Eichmann’s sentencing, Nolan switched from portraits of him to dozens of paintings of camp prisoners, to increasingly skeletal figures, as well as smoking crucifix.
In typical Nolan fashion he painted with great intensity, his style allowing him to quickly generate hundreds of works on paper, often tens of dozens created in a single sitting, each a subtle yet entirely purposeful variation on the last.
Most interestingly perhaps, all these works were made before Nolan even visited Auschwitz. Evidence suggests that the experience had a profound impact on him. He did not return to the subject for several years but later collaborated with Benjamin Britten on his coral work titled Children’s Crusade.
13 August - 26 September, The Rodd, Presteigne