Perpetuum Mobile

Czech-born Dušan Marek was a major figure in a wave of post-war innovation in Australian art and design. The artist, who declared his lifelong commitment to surrealism at the age of fourteen, had spent a formative period studying in Prague during the 1940s, where he was surrounded by the progressive art and ideas of the Czech avant-garde and the Czech Surrealist group. Over the course of five decades, he experimented across a wide range of media – paintings, drawings, prints, jewellery and film – to explore and express hidden aspects of human experience.

When Marek first exhibited in Australia, the two works Perpetuum mobile and Equator, 1948, provoked early controversy. Described by one critic as ‘puzzle picture curiosities’, the works were removed from display from the 7th Annual Exhibition of the Contemporary Art Society of South Australia, held in 1949, a decision reportedly made on the grounds of the works’ obscenity, along with the crudeness of Marek’s found frame and makeshift support. Painted on board the SS Charlton Sovereign during Marek’s prolonged sea journey to Australia from Europe, the works draw on ideas of duality and multiplicity. The paintings were created on opposite sides of the ship’s gaming table, stripped of its felt covering, and, like a true surrealist object, the panel can be viewed with one or both sides visible, challenging the very logic of seeing.

Elle Freak, Associate Curator of Australian Paintings and Sculpture