It took Katoomba painting restorer, Kristel Smits, many painstaking weeks to bring it back to its former glory.
The brightly coloured multi-panel mural by artist Reinis Zusters, belonging to the Blue Mountains Grammar School, was restored this year and recently re-hung for public viewing close to the school’s administration office entrance.
The five metre long mural titled 'Dance of the Spirit (Birth of a Nation) was donated in 1992 by the artist who had moved to Wentworth Falls with his wife. It was in a high traffic area in the Science and Library Resource Centre where dust and pedestrian traffic damaged the painting.
Donated to the school because of the close association the artist had with the Kedumba Prize and the school’s art department, the vibrant painting combines Aboriginal and western images and is made up of 126 small canvas boards that were framed up as 21 panels.
Restoration cost the school $4,700 (the school has chosen not to reveal the painting’s actual value) and since it's been restored it has moved to a new honorary position in the main gallery.
School archivist Marlene Plummer said it had been donated “with the generosity of spirit that was so much a part of this special man”.
“Since 1992 students have had the benefit of absorbing this work, maybe subconsciously but certainly appreciated. In its new home in the Coorah Gallery it will be seen by even more people and we can celebrate Reinis and his deep appreciation of Australia,” Mrs Plummer said.
Ms Smits said it had been “the biggest thing I've worked on by myself”.
“I tend to find something interesting about everything I work on, and his painting technique I found very interesting as it's so unique. The mural is done in acrylics, and I have worked in acrylics for a long time as an artist, so that also makes it of personal interest,” she added.
The restorer has worked in the field for two decades at several major art institutions in Sydney and Europe. She said the restoration “largely involved removing dust and accumulated dirt from the surface, as well as some food stains, and included retouching of paint damages”.
“Some of the panels had also warped over time and were pulled back into plane by applying a protective, acid-free backing.”
Headmaster Trevor Barman who called it a personal favourite said the restoration “has brought the painting back to life, in particular the vividness of the colour. Everyone who sees it is attracted by the colours. Closer scrutiny reveals the serpent, the rivers, and the Indigenous people revealing the connection between the people and the land. Everyone comments favourably.”
Reinis Zusters was well known for his large triptychs of the Blue Mountains, including his colourful work of The Three Sisters which still hangs in the Conservation Hut at Wentworth Falls. He won the Wynne Prize for landscape painting at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1959, just nine years after arriving in Australia as a post-war Latvian refugee.
The grammar school mural shows Zuster's distinctive painting style, combining Jackson Pollock action painting with more traditional representation. He spattered the surface of each canvas board with dots of red, yellow, blue and white paint, over which he thinly painted his imagery of an Aboriginal hunter and serpent and several western figures. Zusters spent his early life in an orphanage after his dad died when he was two. He grew up to be honoured with the Order of Australia Medal in 1994 for his contribution to the art world. He died in Wentworth Falls in 1999.
The painting can be viewed in business hours after signing in to the school.
