Australia’s Jewish Past: Barbara Nancy Brash – renowned artist and printmaker
Barbara’s grandfather, Marcus Brasch, as we have known from last week’s story and that of Lena Brash, became the owner of the largest music business in Australia – Brashs.
Portrait of Barbara Brash by Dorothy Braund, 1967, oil on canvas
The Brasch family also had ties to the Australian Impressionist Movement through Lena, Woolf’s daughter who married Louis Abrahams who became a founding member of a founding member of the Heidelberg School, as well as his son Reuben who established the Curlew Camp, which Tom Roberts and Arthur Streeton visited between 1881 and 1882.
Barbara was born in 1925, and together with her brother Geoffrey, she went to primary school at St Margaret’s Melbourne and finished her schooling at St Catherine’s College. Geoffrey, as we know, took over the music business from his father Alfred. Although Barbara produced several record labels for Brashs during the 1980s, she was not an active participant in the business. She stayed in the family home in Toorak until her father’s death and then moved to Kooyong where she lived for the remainder of her life.
In 1946, at the age of twenty-one, Barbara enrolled at the National Gallery School to study for a Diploma of Art. She was taught painting by Alan Sumner, the first Modernist instructor at the NGS, who was also known for his pioneering work as a screen printer. She went on to enrol at the George Bell School where she studied the principles of modernist painting. Geroge had studied at the NGS and was known as a foundational figure in Australian modernism. It was here that she met painter Dorothy Braund, who had also studied under Alan Sumner at the Gallery School. Barbara then studied at the Melbourne Technical College and learned the art of etching.
In the late 1940s, Barbara left Australia to travel Europe with Dorothy Braund, returning to Melbourne from London in 1951. On her return, she became involved with a circle of artists called the Melbourne Printmakers Group, which was based at the Melbourne Technical College. Charles Blackman was also a student with her there, as well as others, all of whom went on to be well-known in the Australian art world. Barbara also joined the Studio One Printmakers Group in 1963 and from there she became closely involved in the Print Council of Australia, acting as the treasurer in the 1970’s and early 80’s. In 1965 Barbara became a member of the Lyceum Club – established to provide a safe environment for women when they visited the city. Here she met many other artists. In the 1980s, Barbara experienced a lapse in productivity practice, which became reinvigorated in the 1990s by digital media.
She attended workshops run by notable digital printmaker Bashir Baraki – a forerunner in this medium. – to learn the Canon Laser Photocopy technique. In 1996, Barbara published her first collaborative print portfolio alongside Bashir. Her work was titled ‘’The Image Makers’’ which was representative of Australian professional and emerging photographers. Barbara’s work spans a variety of printmaking media and subject matter. Her early prints are largely linocuts or etchings, which are aesthetically within the Classical Modernist tradition. Her lifelong interest in environmental and animal subject matter was observed in her early work. During the 1960s and 70s, Barabra began to produce more abstract prints, experimenting with textural effects such as embossing. Her digital work in the 1990s is particularly interesting as she began to engage with notably more political subject matter than her previous work.
Barbara was a deeply experimental artist, who embraced new technology and aesthetics throughout her career. Her masterful use of translucent and layered colour permeates her entire work.
As early as 1947, she won the NGS Sara Levi Scholarship and a further award for her final year painting ‘’Half Nude’’ in 1949. She was included in several important early modernist print exhibitions, including Studio One Prints ’63 and Australian Print Survey 1963/4. In 1966, her early work toured the United States where she was included in Australian Prints Today at the Smithsonian Institute and The Philadelphia Print Club. In the 1970s, her prints toured South East Asia, Poland, India, and New York and in Japan, she exhibited in three different exhibitions. During this time, she also exhibited her printmaking at the Newcastle City Art Gallery and the Queensland Art Gallery as well as having three major solo exhibitions. Her work can be seen at the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Mornington Peninsula Regional Art Gallery, The Warrnambool Art Gallery, Wagga Wagga Art Gallery and The Ian Potter Museum of Art.
Barbara died on 25 February 1998 at the age of 74. In her will, she left a considerable amount of her shares to animal welfare groups, including Wildlife in Secure Environment, The Animal Welfare League of Victoria, and the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
The AJHS acknowledges the following references in the preparation of this story:
Design and Art Australia Online; Wikipedia; Australia Prints and Printmaking, National Gallery of Victoria and many other Australian Galleries
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