Moya Dyring

Who was Moya Dyring?

Moya Dyring was an Australian artist. She was one of the first women artists to exhibit cubist painting in Melbourne.

Moya Clare Drying was born in Coburg, Victoria 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 in 1920. Moya was educated at Firbank Church of England Girls' Grammar School, Brighton. After visiting Paris in 1928, she studied at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School, Melbourne from 1929 to 1932. where she met her future husband Sam Atyeo. After NGV, Moya studied under George Bell 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, the home and garden of the art patrons John and Sunday Reed, at Bulleen, 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.