John Joseph Wardell Power

Dr John Joseph Wardell Power (1881–1943) was an Australian Modernist artist. He studied medicine at the University of Sydney and served as a doctor in the First World War. After the war he left medicine and studied at the Atelier Araújo in Paris and became interested in Cubism and abstract art. He was a member of the London Group and the Comite Abstraction-Creation, Paris. JW Power died in Jersey, Channel Islands in 1943. He left his estate (worth £A2 million) to the University of Sydney where the Power Institute of Fine Arts now bears his name. The Power bequest was the core funding to set up Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art.
Works.
Power authored the book Eléments de la Construction Picturale (Paris, 1932). In his treatise, he acknowledges a Brazilian painter, Pedro Correia de Araújo (who he calls Senhor Pedro Araujo) as the one who introduced him to the subject. The University of Sydney has over 1000 of his works, including 150 canvases. The National Library of Australia also holds a collection of artworks from his collection, personal papers and printed material.