Collection Online
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
182.8 × 152.3 cm
Place/s of Execution
Melbourne, Victoria
Inscription
inscribed in black paint on reverse u.l.: R Jacks (underlined)
inscribed in black paint on reverse u.l.: Metropolis 6 / (revisited) (crossed out) / 1984 / OIL ONLY
Accession Number
2015.83
Department
Contemporary Art
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased NGV Foundation, 2015
© Julienne Jacks
Gallery location
Not on display
About this work

Robert Jacks was one of Australia’s most significant abstract artists. His first solo exhibition in 1966 at Gallery A in Melbourne was a sell-out success. In a review of the exhibition, influential art critic Patrick McCaughey described Jacks as a distinctly new voice who signaled the arrival of the 1960s in Melbourne. Jacks left Australia for Toronto in 1968 and a year later moved to New York, where he lived for the next nine years. Jacks’s confidence as an artist grew throughout the 1980s, a decade in which the art market experienced a significant and sustained boom. He responded with a sequential series of major paintings, including his Metropolis series.

Subjects (general)
Nonrepresentational Art
Subjects (specific)
angular (shape) diagonal grey (colour) monochrome shape (form attribute) triangles (polygons)