Every year, modernist Eric Thake would send his friends a hand-made Christmas card. Original linocut prints, these cards have become canonical, each observing a changing nation through one its most distinct voices.

Dated 1972, "An Opera House in Every Home" is among Thake's best known images. It is a visual pun executed with brilliance, a stack of dishes in the style of the Opera House. Due for completion the year before this work was made, the Opera House was controversial and ostentatious in a way uneasy to the Australian sensibility. Thake plays on this, laconically democratising the structure, blowfly and all. 

Represented across numerous public collections, including at the National Gallery of Australia, "An Opera House in Every Home" is a museum-quality work. It speaks to Thake's remarkable vision, Australian modernism and the friendship between an artist and scholar. With strikingly excellent provenance, it is a prize for collectors of modernist art. 

Eric THAKE (1904 - 1982)
'An Opera House in Every Home' 1972
linocut on paper
Image Size: 15 x 21 cm
Dimensions: 15 x 42 cm
Signed: Signed and dated lower right: Eric Thake 1972; titled lower left

Comes with Letter of Provenance

Condition: Very Good: Describes a work of art's image as Excellent, but may show some small signs of surrounding wear to paper. There are no tears to paper margin.

(c) The Artist or Assignee