biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1914–99)
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| biography:
| Painter, born in Melbourne, Victoria, NE Australia. Educated in Melbourne, he received no formal art training. He was known as a pioneer of Surrealism in Australia, and for his Expressionist and nightmarish images. His painting ‘Victory Girls’ (1943), part of the series ‘Images of Modern Evil’, is typical of his enraged indictment of a corrupt, debased society, a view which he defended in writing of a polemical nature in the magazine Angry Penguins during the 1940s. He was also known for his paintings of harsh Australian landscape as well as for his self-portraits. He left Australia in 1947, working and exhibiting in Japan, Europe, and the USA, returning in 1960. An important retrospective of his work was mounted by the Australian National Gallery in 1990. |
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