Elder Wing of Australian Art: Audio Plain English Tour
Work 12 of 15

Dorrit Black was born in Adelaide.

She painted and was a printmaker.

A printmaker is someone who makes pictures or designs pressed onto paper.

Dorrit studied at the South Australian School of Arts and Crafts in 1914.

She did more study in Sydney at Julian Ashton’s Sydney Art School.

In 1927 she studied modern art in London.

The following year she studied cubism in Paris.

Cubism is painting using flat shapes.

Dorrit came back to Australia in 1929.

She then made and taught modern art for the rest of her life.

In 1931 she set up the Modern Art Centre in Sydney.

She was one of the first women in Australia to run an art gallery.

She came back to live in Adelaide.

In 1939 she built her own home with a studio.

A studio is a place for making art.

The Bridge is an oil painting which shows the making of Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Dorrit painted the bridge after finishing her cubism lessons in France.

The Bridge is one of Australia’s first cubist landscape paintings.

Dorrit has painted this work showing from morning, on the left,

to evening on the right.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge opened in 1932.

The Bridge is still the biggest steel arch bridge in the world.

It excited many other artists - like

Harold Cazneaux, Grace Cossington Smith, Frank Hinder, and Margaret Preston.