B. 1943 – 2014

Robert Jacks is among Australia's most renowned abstract artists. He left Australia in 1968 for the United States and Canada, spending extended time in New York. Here, having caught their eye with his minimalist style, he was invited to exhibit by Sol LeWitt and Robert Rauschenberg at the New York Cultural Centre in 1971. 

When he returned to Australia in 1978, Jacks brought back a finely-tuned visual language. Over the subsequent decades, he was collected by every state gallery, the subject of numerous monographs and honoured with a retrospective at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2014. In 2001, the Bendigo Art Gallery established an art award in Jacks' honour.

As a painter and printmaker born from sculpture, Jacks perceived a vital link between the flat and three-dimensional, reflecting:

"I think my work has always been minimal and abstract because when I was being taught sculpture, it was expressed in abstract terms. Form in space, mass and volume - that sort of thing. Painting, for me, is an extension of sculptural ideas."

To learn more about Jacks, read our article on the artist here.