OSWALD HALL (1917-1991)

Oswald Hall, an Australian painter and printmaker was son of Bernard Hall, the noted painter and long time director of the National Gallery of Victoria. Hall studied at the National Gallery of Victoria School between 1934 and 1938. strengthening his allegiance and interest in modernism, Hall was a founding member and later council member of the Contemporary Art Society in Melbourne. His work from the late-1930s and during the 1940s reveals a wide range of interests including abstraction, Surreal landscapes, social realist tableau and tribal figure studies with an obvious debt to Picasso. In the 1950s his work developed into an expressionistic surrealism, combining many of his earlier stylistic interests. His work has been widely written about in the context of Australian surrealism and is featured in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, Heide Museum of Modern Art and the Agapitos/Wilson Collection.