Robert Jacks represents one of Australia’s most esteemed and distinctive abstract artists. From selling out his first solo exhibition in 1966, spending ten-years on a self-described ‘international internship’ in New York and Canada through to a major retrospective at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2014, Jacks’ spent a lifetime fine-tuning his visual language.

Across his career, Jacks recurrently invoked Irish modernist writer James Joyce. He sensed a symbiosis between his own practice and the writer's literary collages, how he spun connections from seemingly disparate forms. In 2004, Jacks was made the official artist for Bloomsday – an annual festival that sees Dubliners retrace the day that unfolds in Joyce's magnum opus, Ulysses.

‘Bloomsday 2’, an original screenprint on paper, is an ode to this text. Bright green shapes scatter across a blue plane, creating a constellation left unstated. In Ulysses, Joyce wrote that “The supreme question about a work of art is how deep a life does it spring” – a sentiment that strikes through Jacks’ work. 

Represented in all state collections as well as several monographs, Jacks’ is a compelling find for collectors of abstract art and modernist prints.

Robert JACKS (1943 - 2014)
'Bloomsday 2' 2001
screenprint on paper
Edition of 20
Image Size: 66 x 50 cm
Dimensions: 76 x 57 cm
Signed: Numbered, titled, signed 'Jacks' and dated in margin.
Comes with Letter of Provenance
Printed by master printmaker Larry Rawlings, embossed with printers stamp.
 
Condition: Excellent
 
(c) Robert Jacks / Copyright Agency