# 30951
Sydney Ure Smith
Art in Australia. Art and Architecture. Third Series, Number Seventy-Nine.
$45.00 AUD
Edited by Sydney Ure Smith & Leon Gellert. Sydney : John Fairfax and Sons, 1940. Octavo, pictorial card wrappers (defective, tear to upper wrapper and lacking the lower wrapper), 100pp, illustrated with tipped-in colour plates, plus b/w plates, a good copy only. Features articles on training infant artists, Elioth Gruner, and the provinicial galleries of Victoria. Also includes colour and black and white plates of works by Elaine Haxton, Elioth Gruner, and Norman Lindsay, among others.
Art in Australia was conceived by Sydney Ure Smith as a flagship for Australian painting and graphic art, and has become the most important resource on Australian art in the first half of the twentieth century. Robert Holden writes ‘The magazine became a showcase of Australian printing ability and set new standards of advertising excellence …’ Artistic layout, quality graphic work in colour, an harmonious choice of typography and carefully worded text were all combined …’ (Cover Up, Sydney: 1995, p. 74).
For over a quarter of a century, and through its different formats, Art in Australia reviewed and discussed all aspects of Australian art exhibited in both commercial public galleries. Its longevity as a journal was due to its modern approach to design, with many covers being icons of art deco style in themselves