John Joseph Wardell Power

Dr John Joseph Wardell Power (1881–1943) was an Australian Modernist artist. He studied medicine at the University of Sydney and served as a doctor in the First World War. After the war he left medicine and studied at the Atelier Araújo in Paris and became interested in Cubism and abstract art. He was a member of the London Group and the Comite Abstraction-Creation, Paris. JW Power died in Jersey, Channel Islands in 1943. He left his estate (worth £A2 million^[1]) to the University of Sydney where the Power Institute of Fine Arts now bears his name.^[2] The Power bequest was the core funding to set up Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art.^[3]

Works[]

Power authored the book Eléments de la Construction Picturale (Paris, 1932). In his treatise, he acknowledges a Brazilian painter, Pedro Correia de Araújo (who he calls Senhor Pedro Araujo) as the one who introduced him to the subject.^[4] The University of Sydney has over 1000 of his works, including 150 canvases. The National Library of Australia also holds a collection of artworks from his collection, personal papers and printed material.^[5]

References[]

External links[]

• JW Power, Australian Dictionary of Biography
• JW Power exhibition at NLA: Modernist rescued from obscurity, Sydney Morning Herald, 18 July 2014

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