Peter Booth

Drawing (also known as Untitled or Gestural Landscape or Night Sky), 1976
oil paint and crayon on paper
45.5 x 35 cm (image); 65.2 cm x 53.5 cm (frame)
with eight labels, including three from the Biennale di Venezia '82, one from the Arts Council of Great Britain and one with the Laverty Collection number 'ID.33' (all on the reverse, full details below)

SOLD

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Provenance
Bruce Pollard Collection
Pinacotheca Gallery, Melbourne
The Laverty Collection, acquired from the above in February 1986 (Laverty ID33)

Exhibited
Eureka! Artists from Australia, Arts Council of Great Britain, Serpentine Gallery, 13 March – 25 April 1982
Australia: works by Peter Booth and Rosalie Gascoigne, Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy, 1982, cat. 6 
Peter Booth - Works on Paper 1963-1985, University Gallery, University of Melbourne, 13 November - 13 December 1985, cat. 21


Literature
Art and Australia, vol 16, no. 1, September 1978, illus. p. 49 (titled Drawing November 1976 and then owned by the artist)
Australia - Works by Peter Booth and Rosalie Gascoigne, arti visive ‘82 - Catlogo generale, la Biennale di Venezia 1982, cat no. 1, not illustrated
Nick Waterlow, Ann Lewis, Gary Catalano, Ian North, Australia – Venice Biennale 1982 – works by Peter Booth and Rosalie Gascoigne, Visual Arts Board, Sydney, 1982, p.24; illus. p.31
Frances Lindsay and Gary Catalano, Peter Booth - Works on Paper 1963-1985, University Gallery, University of Melbourne, 1985, illus. cat. 21


From 1977, Booth introduced the figurative and the representational into his work, inspired by William Blake, the psychology of the unconscious, and the manifestations of the unconscious in the works of the Surrealists and Magic Realists in art and literature. He began  recording a diary of his dreams and a process of automatic drawing. Drawing, 1976, can be seen as a transitional work towards this move to representation, a bleak, industrial landscape that still refers to the world of abstract signs.

The eight labels (all on the reverse) read:
(a) descriptive title ‘PETER BOOTH/(Night Sky)’; (b) Biennale di Venezia ’82 label with artwork details, title given as Drawing, 1976; (c) further ‘Biennale di Venezia ‘82/606’ label; (d) ‘Dogana Italiana’ label; (e) Arts Council of Great Britain label with artwork details, title given as Untitled, 1976; (f) gallery label from unknown exhibition – likely Biennale di Venezia ’82 – with artwork details, title given as Drawing, 1976, cat. 6 (g) masking tape with artwork details, title given as Drawing, 1976 (h) and ‘ID. 33’, indicating the Laverty Collection number (all on the reverse)

  • Drawing (also known as Untitled or Gestural Landscape or Night Sky)

Image courtesy of The Laverty Collection


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Born in 1940 in Sheffield, England, Peter Booth began drawing at the Sheffield College of Art while working as a copyboy for a local newspaper. He emigrated to Australia in 1958 and has lived and worked in Melbourne ever since. He was admitted to the National Gallery of Victoria’s Gallery School after impressing its director, John Brack.

Influenced by the industrial Northern England landscape in which he spent his early years as a labourer, Booth became known for hard-edge abstract works, which over time became dominated by heavy blacks. While blacks and dark colours continue to predominate in his works, he began depicting human figures in the landscape in works that are emotionally intense and which hold complex underlying narratives.

Highly literary in its inspiration, Booth draws from great Russian authors like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky as well as Latin American magic realists like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jorge Luis Borges. Drawing has been fundamental to his practice since childhood, as has a dream journal that he has kept since 1973. From 1969-75 he worked in the Prints and Drawings department of the National Gallery of Victoria where the bizarre and frightening works of William Blake and Francisco Goya made a profound impact.

Peter Booth has exhibited for over five decades. He was part of the National Gallery of Victoria’s inaugural exhibition in 1968, The Field and was chosen in 1982 to show at the Australian Pavilion of the Venice Biennale alongside Rosalie Gascoigne. Major solo exhibitions include Project 12: Peter Booth, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, and the major retrospective, Peter Booth: Human/Nature, Retrospective, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2003. His work is held in all major national and state galleries across Australia, and in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Centro Cultural/Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City.