Jeffrey Smart: Master of Stillness

Smart painted highways, traffic signs, trucks, transmitters and brutalist architecture in post-war Europe, aspects of the modern world others found ugly but which he declared beautiful. Adelaide, where Jeffrey Smart was born in 1921, was where his essential evolution as an artist took shape. His early fascination for its grid-like urban landscape was a perfect basis for an ongoing celebration of the phenomena of highways, traffic signs, trucks, transmitters and brutalist architecture in post-war Europe; aspects of the modern world others found ugly but which he declared beautiful. Jeffrey Smartês searches for an elusive stillness in the midst of industrial change, and this can be seen and appreciated here in many of his most important works.