David Aspden

The Artist;
Annandale Galleries, Sydney, 1997;
Private Collection, Sydney, since then

David Aspden & Gunter Christmann, Rudy Komon Art Gallery, Sydney, 1971, no. 6;
David Aspden & Gunter Christmann, VI São Paulo Biennale, São Paolo, Brazil, 1971;
David Aspden: Paintings, Annandale Galleries, Sydney, 7 – 24 May, 1997

Christopher Dean and John McDonald, David Aspden: Survey, exhibition catalogue, Bathurst Regional Art Gallery and Mornington Peninsular Art Gallery, 2012-2013, see p 9 for 'Pale - Brazil series';
Anne Ryan, David Aspden - The Colour of Music and Place, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney, see p 17 for 'Brazil No 3';
“Kitsch, kolor and konceptions”, The Australian, 19 June, 1971 (review of the 1971 Rudy Komon exhibition): “At Rudy Komon’s gallery, David Aspden shows six paintings which consolidate his position as a painter of authority. These are strong, uncompromising paintings, tough but subtle. They reverberate around the walls of the narrow gallery. Aspden has married his colour, with spatial ambiguities, very happily to an overall grid design – a simple system of rough-edged shapes, vaguely concave/convex, which interlock and flicker across the surface of the canvas. Because we read concave/convex shapes as spatial opposites, these support the ambiguities of the colour itself. In Nos 5 and 6 the colour snaps and tumbles along the corridor of the canvases, playing games with subtle colour variation.”
Terry Smith, "Quiet confidence of a rule-breaker", The Australian, 20 June, 1971 (review of 1971 Rudy Komon exhibition): “… The presence of these works is greater, they are almost environmental. In each phase of his work Aspden reaches a greater openness of composition. This is most striking in the 20 feet long painting in this exhibition. Gone is the dominant directional movement of the shapes (usually either horizontal or vertical, never flat), gone also is the sense of shapes placed together, of colours ending up as even. Aspden here brings off an almost Baroque twisting, turning, rolling, grasping of colour areas. He comes close to using the colour areas as distinct shapes (that is, shapes with a position in implied three-dimensional space), but holds back from this through the vibrancy of his colours.”
Noel Hutchison, "The Dynamiting of the picture - David Aspden's painting", Art and Australia, Vol 9, No 3, Dec 1971, see p 224 for 'Untitled' (which was later titled 'Brazil No 3').

David Aspden and Gunter Christmann represented Australia at the 6th São Paolo Biennale and Aspden won the gold medal for the six paintings he presented, which later became known as the Brazil Series. No. 3 is in the Art Gallery of New South Wales collection, No. 5 is in the Art Gallery of Western Australia collection, and other works in the series are in the National Gallery of Victoria, Queensland Art Gallery and National Gallery of Australia collections. In 1971, Aspden's status in the art world was already high. Resolutely dismissing the claims and fears that painting was dying he pressed forward from the relatively minimal works in The Field exhibition to uninhibited celebrations of colour and form which flowered fully with the Brazil Series. The present work would therefore be one of the very few to be won by an Australian artist in what was then one of the most prestigious biennials worldwide.