Jonas Balsaitis

The Artist;  Baker Family Collection

Jonas Balsaitis: Some Border Paintings, Pinacotheca, Melbourne, 15 November - 2 December, 1978;
Jonas Balsaitis: Through the Surface - Paintings 1868-1992, Monash University Gallery, 12 April - 14 May, 1994, no. 7 - and touring to Benalla Art Gallery, 3 June - 3 July, 1994

Mary Eagle, Films lend patterns to painting, The Age, 15 November 1978:
“We can’t accuse Jonas Balsaitis of being merely one of yesterday’s heroes. His style, which eight years ago seemed related to Op Art, has not declined with that style’s eclipse. The Border Paintings, at Pinacoetheca, Richmond ($1,000-$2,000), show no loss of direction and no self-conscious metamorphosis, either… The seven recent paintings show the influence of his paintings in exciting ways. Surfaces are not stressed, except at the borders. In the big centre panels, space is suspended, filmically, in transparent layers. Although not a colourist, he reverses the usual laws of colour-tome in ways that compel admiration… Exclamatory splashes ray out over tightly meshes patterns made up of small irregular shapes arranged on horizontal bands. The sense of imperilled order he creates using volatile colours, illusionistic space and irregular shapes is a stylistic tour-de-force.”;
Alan McCulloch, Talent from the old hat factory, The Herald, 16 November 1978, p 50, illus.:
“Impressive from the beginning, Balsaitis’s art is a rare exception to the rule that geometric abstraction in Australia pallidly imitates the geometric abstractions of the US… Balsaitis is a colorist whose sensuous humanism transcends the boundaries of geometry and endows his work with mystery… A common pictorial language governs all seven paintings but their inflections are entirely different.”;
Carolyn Barnes, Jonas Balsaitis: Through the Surface - Paintings 1868-1992, Monash University Gallery, 1994, illus p 10:
"In paintings like No Name (1978)… Balsaitis approached the act of painting as a process of discovery, applying paint to the canvas then washing it off and using the thin traces of residual pigment which remained as the outline for subsequent forms.  In this way the surface of the painting was slowly built up over time, Balsaitis revelling in the subtle nuances thrown up by the creative process, using them as the inspiration for subsequent formal decision making." (Barnes, op. cit. p 17)