Body and Soul

About the exhibition
Developed to mark the millennium of Christianity in Ukraine, Body and Soul was an exhibition focused on the work and influence of artist Michael Kmit. Born in Ukraine in 1910 and trained in Poland, Kmit migrated to Australia in 1949. The exhibition served an important art historical purpose, offering an appraisal of Kmit’s contribution to Australian modernism and his role in the development of Sydney-based Neo-Byzantinism. Key examples of his work were presented alongside those of his contemporaries, positioning Kmit within a broader artistic context.

Writing in the exhibition catalogue, curator and writer Merryn Gates observed: ‘The heritage which Michael Kmit brought with him to Australia helped foster a climate which was redolent with implications for Australian painting during the sixties: for those who sought a poetic expression of the spirit (John O’Brien); for those who treated the surface as a repository of meaning (Fred Williams, Elwyn Lynn and Ignacio Marmol); and for those developing a symbolic language of geometric forms (Leonard French).’

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^{Michael Kmit, Synopsis 1961, oil on composition board, 75 x 59 cm. Private collection, Sydney. Photo: Jonathon Hogan}