AustLit

'When Danila Vassilieff died, poverty-stricken, in 1958 at the age of 60, he had earned the love, gratitude and reverence of the major Australian painters of the 1940s and 1950s. Despite this, nothing substantial has been written about his influence, his life, his art. Hence he has come to be described as the missing link in the story of Australian twenthieth-century painting. He was a passionate, freedom-loving Cossack who burst upon the Australian art scene in the mid 1930s fired with a belief in creation and fortified by the enthusiastic reception of his work in London.' (Trove record)