Australia, Sturt's Desert Pea 1956
Offset colour lithograph
100 x 64 cm
Signature printed in plate, also Sturt's Desert Pea, Australia - Particulars at Government, Shipping, Airline & Travel Offices, Railway Building, Flinders Street, Melbourne, 153 Kearney Street, San Francisco, 8, CAL, USA, No. 119
Unframed $5,500,
Framed $6,500
Provenance: Private collection, UK until 2025
Exhibited: Follow the Sun – Australian Travel Posters 1930s-1950s, Michelle Hetherington, National Library of Australia, Canberra, ACT 1999-2001 another copy
Literature: Printed: Images by Australian Artists 1942 – 2020, Roger Butler, National Gallery of Australia, ACT, 2021, p26, illustrated, p27
“In the campaigns run across the United Kingdom promoting migration to Australia and Australian tourism the graphic arts and posters played a crucial role… The resurgence in activity returned Australian National Travel Association (ANTA) to the forefront of Australian poster production, with new posters commissioned from [three artists, including] a recent immigrant from England, Eileen Mayo...
"Mayo, who was a well-known member of the Grosvenor School of linocut artists, migrated to Australia in 1952. A printmaker and graphic artist, she designed Australian postage stamps and decimal coinage and, in 1957, a set of posters for ANTA. Distinguished by their lush decorative colour and modernist simplification of forms, they were acknowledged internationally for their visual rigour. Mayo depicted distinctive Australian flora and fauna, their lush decorative colour and modernist simplification of forms, taking care that her imagery embraced the continent, with exotic fish and coral representing the Great Barrier Reef on the east coast, and the primitive bright red flowers of Sturt's desert pea promoting tourism to the mid-year blooming of Western Australian wildflowers."
Poster no.119, Illustrated in Walkabout, vol 23, Nov 1, 1923 as part of Australian National Travel Association 1957 Australian Poster Series;
The Golden Age of Australian Travel Posters, David Whitbread, The Museum, Sept 2023, National Museum of Australia
Item #7512
Price: $6,500.00