The Abbey Art Centre Digital Repository documents the findings of the research project: The Abbey Art Centre: Reassessing postwar Australian art, 1946-1956.

The project is a collaborative venture between art historians from the University of Melbourne; Monash University; The National Art School, Sydney; and Aberystwyth University, Wales, UK. It is funded by the Australian Research Council, 2020-2023 (DP 200102794).

The artworks, archival documents, photographs, rare books and catalogues detailed on this website are housed in multiple public and private collections. In some instances the objects no longer exist and are known only from historical sources. The aim of digitally collating these objects is to closely examine the activities of a group of artists–many of them Australian–who worked at the Abbey Arts Centre, London, 1946-56, and the British and European avant-garde in which they mixed. The Abbey Art Centre project throws light on this historically neglected group of artists and recasts conventional understandings of Australian artists’ role in post-WWII Britain and Europe.

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Architektur-Plastiken am Kreishaus zu Düren (Architectural sculptures at the district hall in Düren), 1912, by Ernst and William F. C. Ohly

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Carved stone architectural decorative relief sculptures. It is not known which elements depicted here are from the Viktoriaschle, Essen, and which are…

Architektur-Plastiken am Viktoriaschule, Essen (Architectural sculptures at the Viktoria Gymnasium, Essen), c. 1912–13, by Ernst and William F. C. Ohly

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Carved stone architectural decorative relief sculptures. It is not known which elements depicted here are from the Viktoriaschle, Essen, and which are…

Puttengruppe am Geschäftshause des General-Anzeiger zu Frankfurt am Main (Groups of putti at the General-Anzeiger office in Frankfurt am Main), 1912, by Ernst Ohly and William F. C. Ohly

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Four groups of putti, male and female, holding bouquets and garlands of flowers on either side of decorative urn or relief, mounted on the façade of…