Reinis Zusters
Zusters was a prolific painter, working predominantly in oils, painting many large landscapes, including triptychs of the Blue Mountains.
Reinis Zusters was born 15 October 1919 in Odesa, Ukraine, of Latvian parents, Janis and Kristina, in the early years of the Russian Revolution.
His mother sought work in Riga, having put both Reinis and his sister Mirdze into separate orphanages from an early age.
After World War II, when Russia invaded Latvia, the Zusters family became refugees, living in Oldenburg and Krefeld Displaced Persons camps in Germany for 7 years.
On landing in Fremantle on 5 January 1950, the family was sent to Northam Migrant Camp and Zusters' first action was to visit the bush with easel and paints.
In 1952, Zusters moved with his second wife, Arija Bikse, from Canberra to Pennant Hills in Sydney to help her family build their first home in Australia.
In 1963, Zusters was one of four outstanding local artists appointed to the Lane Cove Art Panel, alongside Lloyd Rees, Bill Pigeon and Guy Warren.
[6] The Lane Cove Art Society was formed in 1965 and Zusters was an enthusiastic member for many years until he moved to the Blue Mountains.
He often prepared the canvasses for his mountain landscapes in batches, laid out on the grass, splattering backgrounds in the manner of Jackson Pollock and completing with washes and pale glazes of colour.
The close-focus and long-range aspects of the landscape present a magical ambiguity and this, coupled with its logs, lichen and moss and perpetual blue sky, totally absorb me.
"[8] While living in the Blue Mountains and exhibiting at the Holdsworth Galleries, the coffee table book 'Spiral Vision – Reinis Zusters' was published in 1981 to showcase his work.
Blue Mountains City Council purchased several of his works and architect Nigel Bell designed the Conservation Hut in Wentworth Falls, which was built to house and display several of his larger paintings.
For the Australian Bicentenary in 1988, Zusters completed his grandest work – a series of massive epic panels entitled The Birth of a Nation.
Thirteen huge paintings consisted of 42 smaller and 34 large panels, depicting his interpretation of Australia's development since the Aborigines first encountered white men in 1788.
His other murals include Man's Struggle for Identity in Trans City House, Sydney and a World War II memorial in Christchurch Cathedral, Newcastle, after winning the competition to paint it.
