Audette, now 86, recounts her time living in New York in the 1950s as a young artist, mingling with the likes of Mark Rothko​, Willem de Kooning​ and Franz Kline.

It was a formative time: abstract art was the next big thing, and everyone was slapping paint on boards with a pallette knife.

The Sydney-born and trained artist visited de Kooning's studio as he prepared to exhibit Woman, II. 

He viewed some of Audette's sketches and said, as she tells it, "Thank God you've got that kind of background (in realism), because you can go anywhere from there".

In 1955, 16 years after the end of the Spanish civil war, Audette travelled to Spain with her boyfriend, fellow artist John Koenig. There, de Kooning's words would have a special significance.

In Granada, she saw first hand the impact of the Franco dictatorship and the aftermath of the war on the country's poor.

Disease was widespread, men were imprisoned for political reasons, and refugees flowed from village to village.

Audette and Koenig would sit on the curb and sketch beggars, or invite them into their studio to model, in exchange for fresh food. 

Their visits to the Sacromonte gypsy caves were met with incredulous stares – "they thought we were from another planet" – followed by offerings of wine and food.

Her figurative works from this brief period capture the hardship of her subjects. The pain on their faces, frozen in time, invites that same sense of compassion – pity, even.

When Audette left Spain for Italy, she left her affair with realism with it – at least publicly.

She continued to enjoy success in Europe while developing her abstract expressionist works, but a return to Australia in 1966 proved fateful.

It wasn't until her 70s that Audette's profile began to swell again.Yvonne Audette in Spain is on at Art Gallery of Ballarat until October 2.