Malcolm Carbins scores instant success in 1960s Adelaide with move to abstract after classical F. Willard Grey training
Malcolm Carbins had instant success back in 1960s Adelaide with his move to the abstract. His body of work was remembered in Adam Dutkiewicz and Michele Klik’s Malcolm Carbins: Silent Depths: Paintings & Drawings 1947–2002 (top right) in 2010. Bottom right: A sketch portrait of Carbins by Betty Jew of the Royal South Australian Society of the Arts.
Malcolm Carbins was among post World War II South Australia artists who fell into obscurity after acclaim between the 1960s and 1980s.
Carbins was born in the South Australian mid north town Kapunda, probably at his grandparents’ and Aunty Annie’s house in Havelock Street, in 1921. He was the only child of Emily and Arthur Carbins, who were then most likely living in the Riverland on a property given to home as an World War I ex-servicemen.
As a boy, Carbins was bedridden for months with rheumatic fever and asked for drawing materials from his parents. From there, Carbins was interested in becoming an artist. In the hardships of post-World War I Australia, both parents wanted him to become professional in a more reliable field of work. To dissuade Carbins, his father took him to meet then-National Gallery of South Australia director Louis McCubbin, hoping he’d tell Carbins, from viewing his portfolio, that he wasn’t talented enough to study fine arts. Instead, McCubbin said Carbins should be trained and he recommended the School of Fine Arts in North Adelaide, run by Frederick Millward Grey.
Carbins studied under Grey’s system that concentrated on drawing from the antique model, with Augustus John and George Lambert as influences. Carbins served in World War II as a signalman in New Guinea, with the 2nd Australian Imperial Forces, but suffered from malaria and rheumatic fever. Returning from active service, he studied for another year under Millward Grey. The small pension from the commonwealth reconstruction training scheme enabled Carbins to study at East Sydney Technical College where a broader programme in Sydney opened his eyes to modernism in Europe and principally British modernist painter Frank Medworth. Influences on his work from that time included Paul Cézanne, Georges Rouault, Pablo Picasso, Russell Drysdale, William Dobell, James Cant and Dora Chapman.
During three and half years in Sydney, Carbins he worked as a newspaper cartoonist and, around 1947, travelled with Australia’s biggest circus, Wirth’s, drawing many clowns and circus performers. This became his mainstay that gained recognition through exhibitions. He moved back to Adelaide and, by 1954-56, his painting style had gravitated towards the abstract.
Carbins’ solo exhibition at Wentworth Galleries, Rundle Street, Adelaide, in 1961, was an instant success, with the National Gallery of South Australia buying Landscape at Night. He held five solo exhibitions over the next decade, reflected his status as a mature painter. In the 1970s. the lighthouse at Marino Rocks (built in 1962) became a favourite subject for his art, and in the 1980s he worked in more plastic abstract forms. But Carbins, who died in 2002, fell from prominence. Redressing this was Silent Depths: An exhibition of artworks by Malcolm Carbins (1921-2002) in 2022 by the Royal South Australia Society of Arts, who received a bequest of his works, and a M & M (Malcom and Margaret) Carbins Trust was formed to help young and emerging artists.
Preparing for the exhibition, the curators referred to Adam Dutkiewicz and Michele Klik’s Malcolm Carbins: Silent Depths: Paintings & Drawings 1947–2002 (Moon Arrow Press, 2010).
