Ice skater

Margaret Cilento was born in Sydney in 1923, but spent her early life in Brisbane where she met Margaret Olley – they were later to flat together in Sydney and remained life long friends. She studied at the East Sydney Technical College from 1943, and in 1947 travelled to the USA, where she studied at the Brooklyn Museum Art School and at William Hayter's Atelier 17, in New York. In 1949 she was awarded a French Government scholarship to study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where she also continued her studies with Hayter, who by that time had relocated his atelier to Paris. After a brief return to Australia she lived and worked in Europe from 1954 to 1965. Most of her prints were made in the late 1940s and early 1950s. There is currently one etching by Cilento in the collection, 'Bathers' 1947.