Paintings by Australian prize-winner

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33653, 1 October 1974, Page 21

Paintings by Australian prize-winner

: A large exhibition of j paintings by Reinis Zusters 'opened at the Canterbury I Society of Arts Gallery on September 27. I Reinis Zusters was born I in 1918 at Odessa, Russia, of Latvian parents. He arrived fin Australia in 1950, and is now a naturalised Australian. He has won a number of art prizes, including the “Daily Telegraph” art prize, the Wynne competition for landscape, the Rockdale I award, and the Crouch art ■ prize. , Mr Zusters has held many | one-man shows in Australia, I has exhibited in group i shows, and has held onef man exhibitions in Europe and North America. ; Six of his larger paintings I i are in the form of triptychs.; iln the exbition are different jstyles of painting that often , appear designed to fit changes of subject. In “Garden Still Life,” “Tree Painting No. 1” (triptych), and “Tree Painting No. 2” (triptych) he uses broad textural passages of warm colour, and introduces i finer detail only in the insects for whom the trees are home. | • r

Mr Zusters adopts -a complex web of lines through which one must look to find the subject in a number of religious paintings on themes of “Entombment,” “Resurrection,” and “The Scourged Christ.” His manner of painting changes in “Episode in the Bush” (triptych), “Charlotte Pass” (triptych), ‘‘Fractured Granite,” and “Soldier Crabs” to one of a splattered, stippled effect, overhying the subject. The smaller works often appear to be studies for the larger ones, and include a similar variation of painting styles, the application of paint by. pallette knife in land and city scapes and i several paintings showing i the plight of caged birds being a further development. i As a descriptive painter of Australian fauna he is most clearly seen in the more-than-life-size rendering of a: crocodile’s head in “The Crocodile” (triptych), and in the opossum in “Australian Landscape,” both of which are uncluttered by any manteristic gesture. The exhibition will be tpen until October 17, .. -G.m