Carl Plate was a leading 20th century Australian Modernist. The brother of artist Margo Lewers, Plate was known for his abstract paintings and collage, influenced by his time living and travelling in London, Europe and the USSR.
This work, from Plate’s important Blue Monument series, is from a time in Plate’s career where he was “concerned with the destruction, not the reorganisation of forms” as Elwyn Lynn stated in his 1969 essay Carl Plate. Through his abstract compositions Plate was trying to move away from recognition and his use of forms for their symbolic, or emotional function rather than for descriptive purposes.