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Sydney-born painter John Joseph Wardell Power, better known as JW Power, was Australia’s most accomplished artist of the interwar years. In London and Paris in the 1920s and 1930s, Power’s unique blend of cubism, surrealism and abstraction found an audience in the heart of the avant-garde. Today, he is chiefly remembered as a benefactor whose extraordinary gifts led to the founding of the Power Institute at the University of Sydney in 1968 and the establishment of the Museum of Contemporary Art in 1991. This monograph, accompanying the J.W. Power: Art, War and the Avant-garde exhibition at the University of Sydney’s Chau Chak Wing Museum, reveals his singular role in Australian art in the 20th century.

About the authors

Dr Ann Stephen

Dr Ann Stephen, FAHA is Senior Curator, Art, Chau Chak Wing Museum, University of Sydney. She has curated many exhibitions, including those accompanying a range of publications, such as Light & Darkness, Bauhaus Diaspora and Beyond: Transforming Education through Art, Design and Architecture and Modern times: The Untold Story of Modernism in Australia.

ADS Donaldson

ADS Donaldson is an artist, art historian and curator. He studied at Sydney College of the Arts, the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, the École des Beaux-Arts and the University of Sydney. His work is in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Art Gallery of New South Wales and in various state and university museums and art galleries. He is the co-author and co-curator with Ann Stephen of J.W. Power: Abstraction-Création Paris 1934 (2012). He is an Honorary Associate of the Power Institute, the University of Sydney.