Danila Ivanovich Vassilieff (1897-1958)

Danila Vassilieff
Fitzroy Life 1938
Oil on canvas
47.5 x 52.5cm
no.6939

Provenance: The Estate of A.G. Morant, Melbourne

Exhibited: A Memorial Exhibition of the paintings and Sculpture of Danila Vassilieff, Museum of Modern Art of Australia, Melbourne, June 1959, cat, 16

Reference: Moore, Felicity St John, Vassilieff and his art, Oxford University Press Melbourne, 1982 cat. p. 102, p. 147 (illus.)

When Vassilieff, the Russian born 'Cossack' modernist, moved to Melbourne from Sydney in July 1937, his work attracted instant attention from the younger and more progressive artists. He soon found rooms in George Street, Fitzroy. As Felicity St John Moore explains, his arrival "at the height of the controversy between 'art' and 'modern art' provided welcome ammunition for the 'moderns'…. Vassilieff's influence and importance at this time is difficult to overestimate" (Vassilieff and his art, Oxford Press, Melbourne 1982, pp.39, 42). A leading critic of the period, Basil Burdett, considered that Vassilieff had 'discovered' Australian inner urban life as an authentic and powerful subject for art and wrote: "His pictures of Fitzroy and Surry Hills are almost as racily Australian as an epic of urban life by C.J.Dennis" (The Herald, 16 September 1937). Fitzroy Life is typical of the street scenes for which he is best known: the snapshot effect, the rough materials, the rapidity of handling direct from the tube or with the flat of a signwriter's brush adding to the effect of liveliness. It was probably completed in 1938, when Vassilieff had moved to East Melbourne but still returned to the streets of Fitzroy to paint. As Vance Palmer wrote when the artist held an exhibition towards the end of that year, "Vassilieff has been profoundly moved by life… and so he has the power to move us too. Perhaps that is the only valid reason why men should either paint or write." (catalogue introduction, Riddell Galleries, October 1938).