JOSEF STANISLAUS OSTOJA-KOTKOWSKI (1922 - 1994)

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Josef Stanislaus Ostoja-Kotkowski AM is one of Australia's most important, pioneering, influential & award-winning artists. His groundbreaking catalogue includes painting, photography, film-making, theatre design, fabric design, murals, kinetic and static sculpture, stained glass, vitreous enamel murals, op-collages, computer graphics, and laser art, and is best known as one of Australia's first installation artists working with 'sound and image' from the early 1960s. A Polish native, after spending time in a concentration camp during the Holocaust, he studied at the Dusseldorf Academy Of Arts in Germany, then immigrated to Melbourne, studying at the Victorian School of Art. From the late 1950s, he began making experimental short films and working in high profile stage and theatre design. In the early 1960s he introduced Op and Geometric Art into Australia and began to develop his 'sound and image' light shows, using lasers and projections. His 'Chromasonics' became extensively adopted by the entertainment industry. This incredible painting, produced with broadbrush and a mix of PVA & acrylic, was completed on a Melbourne rooftop (see photo) and was exhibited in his PVA Exhibition at Bonython Gallery in Adelaide and Argus Gallery in Melbourne in 1962. The dark subject & style was inspired by his experiences in the Holocaust and is one of the only works from his 'Palinurus Cycle' series not in a National Gallery. As Ostoja used so many experimental materials with his paintings, many have perished, so this is rare.

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