Focus on this artwork and discuss the Reception.
Upon completion the painting was rejected from the Society of Artists exhibition of 1930. The painting was only purchased for the National Gallery of Victoria in 1967, which has been criticised as indicative of the neglect of Cossington Smith's work.The Bridge in Curve has since been identified as "one of Australia's most significant modernist paintings". It was described as a masterpiece of bridge painting by Ursula Prinster, curator of a 1982 Art Gallery of New South Wales exhibition on paintings of the Harbour bridge. Others have provided fuller descriptions of the painting'[It] integrates earth-bound realities with the sweeping, soaring movement of the forming bridge structure, curving across the land and into the sky, the two cranes a bit like Brancusi birds, perched on the edge of possibility.
The contrast between the bridge and its surroundings is highlighted by art historians. The differentiation between the distant, obscure shore, and the blocks of colour in the foreground, with the detailed and delicate depiction of the bridge's struts and girders has been noted, the bridge seeming to rise above the chaos below.
Art Gallery of New South Wales modernist 1930 National Gallery of Victoria