B. 1894 – 1968

A pioneer in Australian modernism, Roy de Maistre’s legacy lies in how he unified music, colour and visual art. He first studied at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music before enrolling in classes at the Royal Art Society under Antonio Datillo-Rubbo who exposed him to European post-impressionists Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Paul Cezanne. 

It was following brief service in the military during World War One however, that Maistre’s theory of colour and music crystallised. Inspired by the colour-therapy treatment given to shell-shocked soldiers, he developed a framework that analogised colours on the spectrum to notes on the musical scale. In 1919 this notion formed the basis of his landmark exhibition with Roland Wakelin, Colour in Art, that unveiled abstract paintings unprecedented in Australian art. 

In 1930 Maistre migrated to London where he spent the remainder of his life, honing a style of abstract cubism that inspired the young Francis Bacon. In 1960, a major retrospective was held in his honour at Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, and in Australia he remains a key figure in modernism, represented across public collections. On colour, Maistre remarked: 

“To them [colour] brings the conscious realisation of the deepest underlying principles of nature, and in it they find deep and lasting happiness – for those people it constitutes the very song of life and is, as it were, the spiritual speech of every living thing.”

To read a more in-depth biography of the artist, click here.