Today, JW Power 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. Featuring dozens of Power’s finished works and showcasing pages of pencil, pen and ink, crayon and occasional watercolour sketches from his private sketchbooks held by the National Library of Australia, this book seeks to answer hitherto unknown questions, giving shape to the complexity of life and work.

Power initially studied medicine in Sydney, following in his father’s footsteps, before serving as a surgeon during the First World War. He abandoned his medical career to study art in Paris in the early 1920s, his années folles (‘crazy years’), producing paintings of dance crazes, fashion and music. Power went on to establish his reputation as a modernist, his unique blend of cubism, surrealism and abstraction finding a following in the heart of the avant-garde.

The impact of Power’s wartime experience would emerge in paintings such as Ypres, with its mournful figure in a devastated landscape, and in his occasionally grotesque Tête (Head) paintings, and he remained a committed anti-fascist throughout his life. He died in the Channel Islands in 1943, having witnessed the Nazi invasion of Jersey and not knowing they would eventually be defeated.

His sketchbooks and collection of art books would eventually make their way to the National Library of Australia, and a large number of his finished works to the University of Sydney. This book accompanies the J.W. Power: Art, War and the Avant-garde exhibition currently on show at the University of Sydney’s Chau Chak Wing Museum. 

J.W. Power: An Australian Avant-Gardist will be released on 1 November 2025.

About the authors

Dr Ann Stephen FAHA is Senior Curator of Art at Chau Chak Wing Museum in the 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 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, Copenhagen, the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, and the University of Sydney. His work is in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, the Art Gallery of New South Wales and in various state and university museums and art galleries. He is an Honorary Associate of the Power Institute at the University of Sydney.

Additional information

Images for media use are available for download via Dropbox.

Contact

Lauren Conron, Media Liaison, National Library of Australia

Phone: 0401 226 697

Email: media@nla.gov.au