The first comprehensive publication of Whiteley’s artistic oeuvre, Schwartz City Books has announced a monumental seven-volume catalogue raisonné chronicling a lifetime of work by Brett Whiteley will be released in December 2019.
Brett Whiteley: Catalogue Raisonné: 1955–1992 has been compiled by art historian Kathie Sutherland over seven years and comprises a seven-volume collection that covers the artist’s lifetime of work in exhaustive detail and is an unprecedented publishing event that confirms Whiteley’s enduring significance as a visionary force of Australian art.
Weighing 21 kilograms and totalling 2400 pages, the set of seven cloth-bound books presented in a deluxe, elegantly finished slipcase features more than 4600 artworks, including hundreds of never-before-published works.
Volumes I, III and IV hold paintings and drawings from the 1950s to the 1990s; Volume II contains exquisite concertina fold-outs of the mammoth The American Dream and Alchemy; Volume V contains Whiteley’s prints; and Volume VI compiles his ceramics and sculpture.
A final book, Volume VII, holds essays, a cataloguing text, an exhibition history, an artist’s biography, a bibliography and an index of persistent themes that lend insightful form to the expanse of Whiteley’s rich and varied oeuvre.
This one-off print release is limited to 1000 copies, with each individual set foiled with a unique number in the series and presented in bespoke packaging.
Kathie Sutherland is an art adviser, curator and art historian. She has lectured extensively in England and Australia, and has held senior executive positions with Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Sutherland’s Brett Whiteley: A Sensual Line 1957–67 was published by Macmillan in 2010.
Brett Whiteley: Catalogue Raisonné: 1955–1992 is published Schwartz City Books – an imprint of Schwartz Publishing Pty Ltd. For more information, visit: www.schwartzcitybooks.com for details.
Image: Brett Whiteley: Catalogue Raisonné: 1955–1992 by Kathie Sutherland (supplied)