Born in Lithuania she migrated to Australia after the Second World War having been trained in the German expressionist tradition. Over the next 30 years she gave the Sydney watercolour scene an unprecedented toughness.

Eva Kubbos (born 1928), studied at the Hochschule für Angewandte Kunst, Berlin and after arriving in Melbourne in 1952 at RMIT. She was impressed by Jackson Pollock’s explosive force and by Mark Rothko’s colour ponds. Her early career was in commercial graphics but in 1960 moved to Sydney and met Henry Salkauskas. It was Salkauskas’ example which led her to abstract expressionist watercolours. The two became close companions until Henry died in 1979.

Both artists, but especially Salkauskas, retained remnants of the landscape in their work and both use solid black brushstrokes which increase its dramatic nature. They have both been described as tonalists but there are differences. Salkauskas seeks elemental, emphatic masses while Kubbos is the more speculative with colour.

The period from 1961 to 1971 was very rewarding for both artists. Eva Kubbos has a solo exhibition at Barry Stern Gallery in 1962 as well as others in Adelaide (1968) and Canberra (1969). She won the Mosman Art Prize in 1964 and 1966. In 1963 she won the first of her three Wynne Watercolour Prizes and her four Trustees Watercolour Prizes at the Art Gallery of NSW. She came to dominate the Pring Memorial Prize for Watercolour with her first win in 1970 and an additional nine up to 1989.

(On the photo: Eva Kubbos with Bernd Heinrich)