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Robin Stewart, born in 1941, is an acclaimed Australian artist whose mature artistic career is shaped by a unique trajectory through commercial art, design, and a deep engagement with modernist and cubist principles. Stewart’s oeuvre resonates with contemporary explorations of the human condition, shaped by both his graphic background and a lifelong dedication to form, geometry, and the introspective corners of urban life.
Stewart’s early artistic promise led him to art school in the late 1950s at Caulfield in Melbourne—a period he would later reflect on as the foundation of his technical skills and creative ambition. Financial pressures forced him to leave art school after two and a half years. Undeterred, he quickly established himself in commercial art studios, learning the intricacies of pre-digital design: from typography to precise lettering and collaborative studio work. This phase was marked by stints in Australia and several influential years spent in Canada, as he absorbed international trends in visual communication.
By the late 1960s, Stewart had returned to Australia, where he ascended to the role of senior art director for leading international advertising agencies. His creative spark was pivotal in building brands and shaping the public face of major campaigns. In 1980, he founded Luscombe & Partners advertising agency, eventually leading it as Managing Director and transforming it into a national brand. Stewart’s career in business was a demanding but rich ground for observations on human aspiration, routine, and the often relentless nature of commercial life—a theme that would later surface in his paintings.
In the early 1990s, Stewart left the commercial sphere to devote himself to writing, publishing acclaimed works of fiction including Goat on a Hill (1999) and Mcity (2007). But it was only in the late 2000s that he committed fully to painting. Working from studios in Melbourne, Stewart transitioned from drawing and notetaking—his habitual methods of ideation—into painting that married the discipline of design with expressive abstraction. He often describes his process as iterative and restless: rarely does a work travel in a direct line from inception to completion. Many paintings, he notes, are solved creatively in parallel, with ideas and colour palettes cross-pollinating across canvases in his studio.
Style, Influences, and Painting Philosophy - Stewart’s mature works are vibrant with architectural structure, influenced by the early twentieth-century Russian Constructivists and Suprematist artists like Alexander Rodchenko, El Lissitzky, and Kazimir Malevich. He admires their sense of vitality, tension, and experimental formalism—qualities he seeks to imbue within his own paintings. The visual language is often described as figurative modernism stripped to its essentials, yet with a persistent interest in the human—both as solitary individual and anonymous participant in the wider mechanisms of urbanity.
Francis Bacon’s psychological edge and Edward Hopper’s meditations on isolation are other acknowledged influences, giving Stewart’s paintings an almost cinematic stillness paired with graphic precision. His choice to limit the colour palette and focus on compositional clarity speaks to his commercial art roots, yet always in service to a deeper narrative or mood.
Robin Stewart’s work has been exhibited in solo and group shows throughout Australia, as well as in Japan and the UK. He was notably selected for the Royal Academy Summer Show in London in 2015 and has been shortlisted three times. In 2016, he was a finalist in the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize, one of Australia’s most prestigious art awards. His work has also been displayed internationally, including at the Metropolitan Art Museum in Tokyo, as part of the Art Olympia international competition.
“UNTITLED” One of Stewart’s works presently for sale:
“UNTITLED,” epitomizes his mastery of cubist expression and psychological depth. Like much of his art, “UNTITLED” does not immediately divulge its secrets—instead, it invites the viewer to navigate intersecting planes, shifting light, and subtle hints of human presence. The painting’s geometric construction channels the Constructivist concern with the architecture of perception; Stewart transforms simple forms into a meditation on the boundaries of self and space.
Through a pared-back palette and hard-edged shapes, Stewart’s “UNTITLED” belies the emotional current that runs beneath its surface: a quiet tension that speaks both to the solitude of contemporary life and the persistent quest for connection. The painting’s ambiguity is its strength, allowing viewers to insert their narratives into the carefully constructed voids and intersections. It is not merely an exercise in design, but a poetic inquiry into how we inhabit—and are shaped by—the structures around us.
Robin Stewart’s paintings are held in many important Private & Corporate collections.
As his reputation grows, Robin Stewart's work continues to resonate with collectors and audiences drawn to art that balances technical acumen with profound explorations of the modern human condition. His legacy is one of synthesis: merging decades of visual communication expertise with a painter’s search for meaning, clarity, and complexity in equal measure.
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