Lecture | Dr Edith Ziegler

Join historian Dr Edith Ziegler who will speak about her book, The Worlds and Work of

Clarice Beckett, 2022 which is a biographical study of this important early Modernist painter.

Edith Ziegler will discuss Beckett’s family background, including her childhood, art

education, philosophical and spiritual influences, friendships, and contemporaries.

About the Book: Clarice Beckett was one of Australia’s most important early twentieth-

century modernist painters, excelling in portraiture, still-life and landscape. The

discovery of a trove of her artworks in 1971 has led to her remarkable talent and

evocative art being recognised afresh and greatly admired.

Clarice Beckett was self-effacing; she left no diaries or letters and was only occasionally

mentioned in the diaries of her friends. For an insight into her enigmatic genius, Edith

Ziegler focuses on Clarice’s family background, childhood; art education; philosophical,

spiritual and psychological enquiries and influences; friendships and contacts. The

reader is drawn into the world in which Clarice’s vision was formed and her talent

developed.

Dr Edith Ziegler is an Australian historian, Adjunct Senior Lecturer at the University of New England, writer, and long-term volunteer at the S.H. Ervin Art Gallery in Sydney.