John Olsen

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John Olsen, 2015.

John Henry Olsen OBE (born January 21, 1928 in Newcastle (New South Wales) , Australia ) is primarily an Australian painter who has also worked as a ceramist , picture maker and printmaker .

Life

John Olsen is the son of Henry Olsen and his wife Esma Agnes, née McCubbin. The father worked at Cooee Clothing . When Olsen reached the age of seven, Olsen's father was transferred from Newcastle to Sydney , where the family lived in Bondi . In Sydney, he attended Paddington Junior Technical High school until his father joined the army at the outbreak of World War II . Olsen entered St. Joseph's College boarding school at Hunters Hill while his mother and sister moved to live with relatives in Yass .

After graduating from high school, he worked as an office clerk for Elders Smith in 1943 , but was uncomfortable with the job and soon began drawing as a freelance cartoonist and illustrator for a number of press publications in Sydney. In 1946 he took his first art course at Julian Ashton Art School and then enrolled at Dattilo Rubbo’s School , where he learned life drawing . In 1950 he returned to the Julian Ashton School .

The sociable Olsen moved in the bohemian scene of Sydney "in the circle of artists, writers and coffee drinkers" who gathered around the Notanda Gallery of the gallery owner Carl Plate in what was then Rowe Street . Here he decided to become a serious artist. At the Julian Ashton Art School , Olsen was a student with the painter John Passmore , who taught here from 1950 to 1954 and supported his project. Olsen received further instruction from Godfrey Miller at East Sydney Technical College .

Posters in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, students protest against the award of the Archibald Prize to William Dargieden, January 1953.

In the 1950s, young radical students like Olsen excelled as leaders of the avant-garde, in 1953 he led a student demonstration in protest against the conservative Board of Trustees of the National Art Gallery of New South Wales and was quoted in the press for winning the Archibald Prize to William Dargie . Over two decades later, Olsen was perceived similarly as the conservative curator of this institution.

In the exhibition Contemporary Australian paintings. Pacific Loan Exhibition aboard the SS Orcades on the Orient Line, he received an award in 1956 for his work on display. In December of the same year, Olsen showed his work together with John Passmore , Ralph Balson , Robert Klippel , Eric Smith and William Rose as an exhibition by the artist group Direction 1 in the Macquarie Galleries of Treania Smith in Sydney. This exhibition is credited for introducing Abstract Expressionism to Australia, although none of the artists involved, with the exception of Klippel, had any real knowledge of Modern Art in any other part of the world.

Some of Olsen's paintings were partly inspired by atmospheric readings by the author TS Eliot and had impressed the painter and art critic of the Sydney Morning Herald , Paul Haefliger , so much that he encouraged the Sydney businessman Robert Shaw to give Olsen a private scholarship to Europe, which this granted on condition that Olsen would not be based in Great Britain. So he went to Paris, where in 1957 he learned the techniques of etching for a few months in Atelier 17 of the artist Stanley William Hayter . He then traveled to Spain and in July 1958 settled down to paint in a house in Deià , Mallorca . Here he also dealt with the preparation of dishes from the Mediterranean cuisine .

In his Spanish years, his work was influenced by artists of tachism such as Antoni Tàpies and Jean Dubuffet . He also showed interest in Eastern philosophy and poetry, which repeatedly inspired his work. His art was shaped by this Spanish influence even after his return to Sydney in 1960, when he created the exuberant painting Spanish encounter from 1960, which embodies the vitality he experienced in Spain and in the vibrant life of Sydney. At the time he was living on Woolloomooloo's Victoria Street in a creative community with many of Sydney's leading younger artists. The painting is now in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales . The Journey into the you beaut country series from this period is one of his greatest poetic visions. The image of the sun - with its energy at the center of all life - is a recurring motif in Olsen's work alongside the egg and the seed. The water and especially the harbor of Sydney provided inspiration for numerous paintings throughout his life, the most famous of which is Five Bells from 1963.

Olsen's paintings from the 1960s established him as one of the leading artists of his generation. He later spent a few months in Paul Haefliger's former home in the old gold rush town of Hill End before finally settling in Watsons Bay with his young family . This was the seascape that inspired paintings such as Entrance to the Seaport of Desire and other works that could at times be "feasts of hedonism ". Olsen returned to Europe in 1965 and spent almost two years in Portugal . Inspired by the colors and rhythms of Portuguese village life, he created works such as The chapel from 1966 and oversaw the weaving of pictorial designs, including Joie de vivre , which was created in a Portalegre workshop between 1964 and 1965 .

Although he was now recognized as a major artist, Olsen could not support his family from the sale of his work, so he also attended East Sydney Technical College , Desiderius Orban's School, Mary White Art School and in front of architecture students at the University of New South Wales taught. In 1968 he opened his own art school at the Bakery Art School for a year . In 1969 he and his family moved to the Clifton Pugh artist collective in Dunmoochin , Victoria . After returning to Sydney in 1971, Olsen bought a large plot of land in Dural , northwest Sydney, where he built a large house and set up a studio. From here he went on many painting and drawing expeditions, including a visit to Lake Eyre during a flood, during which a large series of paintings was created. The lake included a “huge space” and the concepts of “emptiness” and “edge” that were groundbreaking for its development.

In 1980 Olsen moved to Wagga Wagga , where he was in a relationship with the artist Noela Hjorth . They later both moved to Clarendon in the Adelaide Hills , where they lived and worked until their relationship ended in 1987. That year Olsen returned to the Paddington artist community in Sydney. He and his fourth wife, Katherine, moved to Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains in 1989 . In 1999 they moved to a large property called Owlswood near Bowral in the Southern Highlands south of Sydney, then in 2011 to an oceanfront property in Avoca Beach on the Central Coast north of Sydney.

John Olsen has been one of the most enduring Australian artists throughout his career. He has shown his work in over 50 solo exhibitions and his works are represented in most public Australian collections. The Gallery of New South Wales and the National Gallery of Victoria showed the exhibition John Olsen in 2016/2017 . The you beaut country . He has won numerous prizes, including the Wynne Prize for landscape painting in 1969 and 1985 , the Sulman Prize in 1989 and the Archibald Prize in 2005 . For his services to the arts, he was awarded the Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1977 and was decorated with the Officer of the Order of Australia in 2001 . In 2011 the University of Newcastle awarded him an honorary doctorate. The painter is the subject of numerous monographs.

Works (selection)

  • Darling River Landscape , 1979
  • Popping blue bottles
  • Chasing the rhino , 1992
  • Frog , 1975
  • Improvisation on a Sound , 1973
  • The Little River
  • The Bath, early morning , Bondi 2007
  • Wild Australia , 1971
  • Childhood by the Sea , 2015
  • Frog & Banana Leaf
  • Tropical rainshower
  • Portrait of Robert Hughes
  • Owls Over the Murrumbidgee , 1981
  • Echidna & Sun Man , 1979
  • Wild Camels , 1976

literature

  • Loan Bungey: John Olsen. An artist's life. HarperCollins Australia, 2014, ISBN 1-74309-613-5 , 528 pp.
  • Ken McGregor: John Olsen. Drawing. The human touch. Macmillan Art Publishing, 2014, ISBN 1-92139-481-1 , 288 pp.
  • Deborah Hart: John Olsen . Tortola, BVI: Craftsman House, New York 1991, ISBN 976-8097-14-0 , 228 pp.
  • Virginia Spate: John Olsen. Georgian House, 1963, 19 pp.

Web links

Commons : John Olsen  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Joanna Mendelssohn: John Olsen b. 1928 . In: Design & Art Australia Online, 2012.
  2. ↑ Street sign "Notanda Gallery" . In: Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences, Sydney 2009.
  3. ↑ a b c d e Artist profile John Olsen . In: Art Gallery of New South Wales
  4. ↑ Amanda Hooton: John Olsen: at home with the Australian artist. In: Sydney Morning Herald of August 30, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Olsen, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Olsen, John Henry (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Australian painter
DATE OF BIRTH January 21, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Newcastle, New South Wales , Australia