Nationalistic pastoral painting of the Australian landscape were superseded by abstracted, colourful distorted images of modernist works.

After the World Wars the dynamics of society in Australia and overseas changed dramatically, causing increased acceptance and attraction towards modernism.

Social and political unrest continued due to the devastation of war and increased immigration occurred.

This led to a number of European artists moving to Australia, which contributed to the introduction of further art styles, such as surrealism, social realism and expressionism.

Additionally, continued technological progress in the later 20th century contributed to an increase in cubism and print making.

[2] It wasn't until the early 1900s when there was an influx of female artists who joined their male counterparts to study art in Paris that Modernist ideologies begin to reach Australia.

[5] In 1913 the Sydney artist Norah Simpson returned from Europe where she had been studying art in Paris and London at the Westminster School of Art[6] she brought reproductions of leading modernists artists works such as Henri Matisse, Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, etc.

[1] Notably, as the first Australian Modernist painting, The Sock Knitter by 1914 was created out of Dattilo-Rubbons art school by Norah Simpson's fellow pupil Grace Cossington-Smith.

These artists who travelled to Europe at this time included Grace Cossington-Smith, Anne Dangar and Dorrit Black, who learnt about Cubist theories and methods by their teacher Andre Lhote.

[11] These female modernists learnt about cubism in France and brought back these techniques and employed these techniques to the Australian context, For example Dorriet Black's 1932 lino print, Noctornal depicts the Sydney street Wynyard with simplistic forms that are indicative of cubism.

In between the first and second World Wars there was a lot of uncertainty social and political unrest which fuelled many modernist artists.

Naturalistic art prospered as the national image until the end of the Second World War where even more social and political unrest existed.

[12] The Australian female Modernists employed avant-garde techniques and skill to their art however much of the subject matter was quite traditional and not provocative like their European counterparts.

The international surrealist exhibition held in Burlington Galleries in London in 1936 is seemingly the cause for surrealism to reach Australia.

The influence of this exhibition on his art practice is evident through the "strange figurative distortion"[17] that pervades his works including New York 1936.

Many modernists in Australia and in Europe employed Indigenous imagery and or artefacts in their works, as there was an increase interest due to the idea of social evolution, which suggests that the "primitive" cultures hold the key to progress.

This reluctance also stems from not wanting to associate the distorted images that exist in traditional body painting and ground drawings with the "aesthetic abstraction" (73) [20] of western Modernism.

Albert Namatjira is an Indigenous artist born in Hermannsburg in central Australia, who painted water-colour landscapes.

[citation needed] The Indigenous western acrylic desert art movement began approximately in 1971[22] in Papunya in the Australian outback.

This town was created as a result of an attempted assimilation project by the Government in the 1960s; the peoples had no cultural association with this land, being forcibly moved there.