The influence of Australian women on Modernism in Australian Art.

Modernism is the movement which developed out of the French impressionism under the influence of Cezanne, Seurat, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse and the artists associated with their respective circles. Artists no longer sought to imitate nature-an ideal the nineteenth century had cherished. Some supporters of the modern movement maintain that the avant-garde artists in the early twentieth century gave up attempting to imitate nature because that was a simple matter having little to do with …

…ervative Ashton, but also by the relatively tolerant George Lambert who had formed the Contemporary Group with Proctor in 1926, and Sydney Ure smith, who set up the magazine Art in Australia in 1921. In Melbourne modernist styles, opposed by Benard Hall and Max Meldrum, had made slower progress. But Meldrum's tonalism did in fact offer a starting point for modernist simplification of form, and his student Clarice Beckett found her way back from tone to color.