Moya Dyring
Encyclopedia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n artist. She was one of the first women artists to exhibit cubist painting in Melbourne.
Moya Clare Drying was born in Coburg, Victoria
Coburg, Victoria
Coburg is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 8 km north from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Moreland, although a handful of properties on Coburg's Eastern boundary are located in the City of Darebin...
in 1909, the third child of Carl Peter Wilhelm Dyring, medical practitioner, and his second wife Dagmar Alexandra Esther, née Cohn, both Victorian born. The family moved to Brighton
Brighton, Victoria
Brighton is a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 11 km south-east from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Bayside. At the 2006 Census, Brighton had a population of 20,651...
in 1920. Moya was educated (1917-27) at Firbank Church of England Girls' Grammar School, Brighton. After visiting Paris in 1928, she studied at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School
National Gallery of Victoria Art School
The National Gallery of Victoria Art School , associated with the National Gallery of Victoria, was founded in 1867. It was the leading centre for academic art training in Australia until about 1910. Among its luminaries, the school was headed by John Brack from 1962-68 and Sir William Dargie was...
, Melbourne from 1929 to 1932. where she met her future husband Sam Atyeo. After NGV, Moya studied under George Bell
George Bell (painter)
George Frederick Henry Bell was an Australian painter.He was born in Kew, Victoria, the son of George Bell, a public servant, and educated at Kew High School. He studied at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School from 1895-1903...
in the Bourke Street Studio School in Melbourne, who and Sam Atyeo, encouraged her to experiment with modernism. Sunday Reed also studied at Bell's School at the time.
For several months in 1937 she took charge of Heide
Heide Circle
The Heide Circle was a loose grouping of Australian artists who lived and worked at "Heide", a former dairy farm on the Yarra River floodplain at Bulleen, a suburb of Melbourne, counting amongst their number many of Australia's best-known modernist painters....
, the home and garden of the art patrons John
John Reed (art patron)
John Reed was an Australian art editor and patron, notable for supporting and collecting of Australian art and culture with his wife Sunday Reed....
and Sunday Reed
Sunday Reed
Sunday Reed was notable for supporting and collecting Australian art with her husband John Reed.-Personal history:...
, at Bulleen
Bulleen, Victoria
Bulleen is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 12 km north-east from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Manningham. At the 2006 Census, Bulleen had a population of 10,528.-Etymology:...
, a suburb of Melbourne. Dyring's husband, Sam Atyeo, had an affair with Sunday Reed and later Dyring had an affair with Sunday's husband John. She had a successful solo exhibition at Riddell Gallery in Melbourne in June 1937.
In August 1937, Dying embarked for Panama, then travelled to New York. She disliked the work of contemporary American artists and sailed for France. In 1938 she was based in Paris, taking advantage of Atyeo's contacts within the avant-garde. She studied at the Académie Colarossi, the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and with Andre Lhote.
In 1939, she and Atyeo set up house on a farm in Vence
Vence
Vence is a commune set in the hills of the Alpes Maritimes department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France between Nice and Antibes.-Population:-Sights:...
, France. Atyeo accepted a commission in Domenica, and left Dyring in Vence. At the outbreak of war she was evacuated back to Australia. She travelled to Dominica where she married Atyeo. However, they were not happy and divorced in 1950. She returned to Australia every three years until 1963.
Two of her earliest works, Melanctha, 1934, a small cubist work, and Portrait of Sunday Reed, 1934, are part of the permanent collection at the Heide Museum of Modern Art
Heide Museum of Modern Art
Heide Museum of Modern Art, more commonly just Heide, is a contemporary art museum located in Bulleen, east of Melbourne, Australia. Established in 1981, the museum comprises several detached buildings and surrounding gardens & parklands of historical importance that are used as gallery spaces to...
. She is also represented in the National Gallery of Australia
National Gallery of Australia
The National Gallery of Australia is the national art gallery of Australia, holding more than 120,000 works of art. It was established in 1967 by the Australian government as a national public art gallery.- Establishment :...
, Canberra.