The first comprehensive survey of J.W. Power’s art, Australia’s leading avant-gardist of the inter-war years.
The Sydney-born painter J.W. Power is Australia's most accomplished artist of the inter-war years. In London and Paris in the 1920s and '30s, his unique blend of cubism, surrealism and abstraction found an audience in the heart of the avant-garde.
In the first comprehensive survey of his work, this exhibition chronologically follows Power's development through portraiture, landscape, figures, still-life and abstraction.
John Wardell Power (1881- 1943) is Australia’s avant-garde artist of the inter-war years. Born in 1881 into a prominent Irish-Catholic family, he studied medicine at the University of Sydney and in 1906, left for Europe. During the First World War, Power served as a surgeon with the Royal Army Medical Corps in Dublin. After the war, he abandoned medicine to study art with Fernand Léger, adopting the professional name of J.W. Power.
In London and Paris in the 1920s and ‘30s, his unique blend of cubism, surrealism and abstraction found an audience in the heart of the avantgarde. He was a founding member of Abstraction-Création, the remarkable collective of abstract artists. The champion of Cubism, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler said, “We all knew Power, but we knew him as an artist, we did not know him as a rich man or a surgeon”.
Co-curated by Ann Stephen & ADS Donaldson
Luke Parker
Youssofzay Hart with Matt Nix
Open seven days a week
Mon - Fri: 10am - 5pm
Sat - Sun: 12 - 4pm
Please note: the Chau Chak Wing Museum is closed on public holidays.
19 July 2025 - 8 February 2026
Power Gallery, Level 3
Chau Chak Wing Museum
Free
Header image: J.W. Power, (Self portrait) c.1920, oil on canvas, PW1961.8
Visitor advice: This exhibition reproduces an anti-fascist poster. One image used in the exhibition contains nudity.
Phone: +61 2 93512812
Email: ccwm.info@sydney.edu.au
Chau Chak Wing Museum
University Place
Camperdown NSW 2050
