Robert Jacks is recognised as one of Australia’s most significant and accomplished abstract artists. His art, like the man himself, is elegant, sophisticated and gregarious. Jacks studied sculpture and painting at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology ad held his first critically acclaimed solo exhibition in 1966. Soon after, he moved to New York to participate in the conceptually oriented minimalist art movement that had taken root there.
Jacks has always remained true to his early love of abstraction and strikingly simplified geometric forms, evident in the cool minimalism of his work. But, as David Thomas points out in his Foreword, “If Jacks is to be described as an abstract artist, one must come to terms with the frequent figurative refrences in his paintings.” Ever present too, is Jacks’s love of music, paticularly jazz. He is an uncompromising individualist interested in the modern, and his technique and skill are uniquely and unquestionably his own.” Â Â Ken McGregor – “Past Unfolded, Robert Jacks” 2001
“Having invented a language of forms that suits his needs, he is continually refining, adjusting his manner of expression. Jacks has often been called a Romantic, even though his work is vigorously abstract, and has been closely aligned with minimalism and colour – field painting”
John Macdonald, Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday March 15, 1997
Image: Beside her Mirage, 1985
oli on linen
198 x 198 cm
