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Details
- Date
- 1943
- Media category
- Painting
- Materials used
- oil on hardboard
- Dimensions
- 62.0 x 43.5 cm board; 77.5 x 59.2 x 5.0 cm frame
- Signature & date
Signed l.l. corner, black oil "COUNIHAN".
Signed and dated c. verso, black oil ".../ ... NOEL COUNIHAN/ .../ 1943/ ...".- Credit
- Purchased 1980
- Location
- Not on display
- Accession number
- 137.1980
- Copyright
- © Estate of Noel Counihan/Copyright Agency
- Artist information
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Noel Counihan
Works in the collection
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About
Although he personally never experienced poverty during the Depression, Counihan lived for a year on the dole when he was twenty and depicted the life of the unemployed in an exhibition of drawings held in 1934. Co-founder of the Workers Art Club with Jack Maughan and Nutter Buzzacott, he joined the Young Communist League in 1931, and joined forces with Yosl Bergner and Vic O’Connor in forming the social realist faction of the Contemporary Art Society in 1942, fired by communist ideology and concerned with social injustice and the condition of man. In 1946 he exhibited with O’Connor and Bergner in Three Realist Artists at Myers Gallery.
'In the waiting room' 1943, painted when Counihan was recuperating from tuberculosis, reveals an affinity with the German artist Kathe Kollwitz as well as other European artists, including Honoré Daumier, Francisco Goya and Ernst Barlach.
Australian Art Department, AGNSW, 2001
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Exhibition history
Shown in 5 exhibitions
Contemporary Art Society Sixth Annual Exhibition (1944), Vickery's Galleries, Sydney, 26 Jun 1944–14 Jul 1944
Three years on: acquisitions 1978-81, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 15 Oct 1981–01 Dec 1981
Aspects of Australian Figurative Painting 1942-1962: Dreams, Fears and Desires (The 5th Biennale of Sydney), S.H. Ervin Gallery, The Rocks, 11 Apr 1984–17 Jun 1984
Angry Penguins and Realist Painting in Melbourne in the 1940s, Hayward Gallery, London, 19 May 1988–14 Aug 1988
Angry Penguins and Realist Painting in Melbourne in the 1940s, Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, 05 Oct 1988–27 Nov 1988
Archie Plus, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 26 Sep 2020–07 Mar 2021
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Bibliography
Referenced in 12 publications
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Noel Counihan, Noel Counihan: paintings drawings prints 1943 to 1973, Melbourne, 1973, 7. cat.no. 2, Collection: Dr and Mrs I.C. McDonald
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Max Dimmack, Noel Counihan, Melbourne, 1974, (colour illus.). plate no. 75a
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Terry Ingram, The Australian financial review, 'Australian art market goes in to hard labour', pg. 44, 47., Sydney, 21 Nov 1980, 44 (illus.), 47.
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Craig Lilienthal, Journal of the Medical Defence Union, Sydney, 1994, cover (illus.).
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Janet McKenzie, Noel Counihan, Kenthurst, 1986, 12 (illus.), 13.
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Barry Pearce, Three years on: a selection of acquisitions 1978-1981, 'Australian Art', pg. 5-26, Sydney, 1981, 5 (colour illus.), 6, 11. cat.no. 11
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Barry Pearce, Art Gallery of New South Wales handbook, 'Australian', pg. 13-35, Sydney, 1988, 24.
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Barrett Reid, Bernard William Smith, Janine Burke, Charles Merewether, Christine Dixon and Max Harris, Angry Penguins and Realist Painting in Melbourne in the 1940s, London, 1988, 173. cat.no. 163
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John Slater, Through artists' eyes: Australian suburbs and their cities 1919-1945, 'The end of certainty: victims and poverty', pg. 137-156, Melbourne, 2004, xiii, 151 (colour illus.), 153. illus.no. 127
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Sydney Ure Smith (Editor), Present day art in Australia, Sydney, 1949, 31 (illus.).
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Peter Ward, The Weekend Australian magazine, 'Noel Counihan: A painter of class', pg. 24-28, Sydney, 16 Oct 1993-17 Oct 1993, 27 (colour illus.).
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Natalie Wilson, Australian art: in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 'Out of Melbourne: realisms and mythologies', pg. 163-164, Sydney, 2000, 164, 168, 169 (colour illus.), 300.
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