“The Curve of the Bridge” Painting by Grace Cossington Smith

• Title: The curve of the bridge
• Year: 1928-1929
• Medium: Oil on cardboard
• Location: The Art Gallery of NSW, Australia
• Author: Grace Cossington Smith

Grace Cossington Smith is known to be one of the first modernists in Australia. “Her paintings often expressed the general excitement and turbulence of big-city life”. The curve of the bridge is not an exception. The bridge painted in the picture is the famous Sydney Harbour Bridge. It is not finished, there is still a lot of work to do, but the painter focuses our attention on massive constructions, emerging from the water as a triumph of a human engineering thought. Being painted in light and pleasant tones, “the painting radiates optimism and energy in a celebration of modern engineering and, more broadly, the modern age”.

Bibliography

Daniel Thomas, “Smith, Grace Cossington (1892–1984),” Australian Dictionary of Biography, 2014. Web.

“Grace Cossington Smith,” Art Gallery NSW, 2014. Web.