Earth, Fire, Water, Air: Anne Dangar's Letters to Grace Crowley, 1930-1951

A collection of letters written by Anne Dangar to her soul-sister and fellow artist, Grace Crowley. The book charts the history of Australian modern art, and one remarkable woman's personal journey through that history. Like many Australian artists, Dangar decided she needed to move overseas to live a life of art. She was 40 years old when she became a disciple of the cubist painter Albert Gleizes and joined the small artists' community in the village of Sablons in France. Life there was full of hardship. The winters were difficult and the house lacked even the most basic amenities. In her letters, Dangar wryly describes her self-subsistence farming and bee-keeping, commenting that on arrival at Sablons she gave up the paintbrush for the spade. In the process, she discovered a new art in combining traditional French pottery with decorations based on cubism and Gleizes' theories on design. The war made life even harder than previously, but Dangar was undeterred and filled with admiration for the French Resistance. In 1948 she finally realised her dream of establishing a pottery studio. Dangar writes with a disingenuous enthusiasm on subjects ranging through painting, potting, Medieval and modern art, colour, other artists, poverty, spiritual beliefs, clothes, cats, the life of surrounding villages, her pupils, the seasons. Her loneliness, to which she freely and frequently confesses, leads her to pour out her heart to Crowley without inhibition. In this part of central France, Dangar was considered a saint and Gleizes called her his spiritual daughter. This is the story of an artist who truly lived her art.