A beautifully framed John Olsen oil print titled 'Five Bells'

Medium: Oil print matted with a gold fillet, under glass - ready to hang.  frame has several marks that could be easily repaired

Image Size: 67 x 94.5cm

Frame Size: 101 x 128cm

John Olsen (b.1928)

Olsen studied at the Julian Ashton School (with Passmore); Orban School, 1950-56, Paris, 1957-60 (engraving with Hayter); independent study in Spain. Olsen‚s independent outlook became evident when he took part in a anti-Archibald Prize demonstration at the AGNSW in 1953. He gained his first official success in Melbourne, 1955-56, when a small painting
was bought for the NGV from the Herald Outdoor Art Show.

By 1957 the Sydney critic Paul Haefliger had recognised his potential and private subscribers raised a fund to send Olsen abroad. He sent exhibitions to Sydney and Melbourne, 1958-59, and returned after three years to introduce an expressionistic type of painting reflecting the combined influences of the Dutch painter Corneille and the Scots painter Alan Davie.

The first impact of this work was felt when, with other young Sydney painters, Olsen took part in the Sydney Nine inaugural exhibition, 1961, to introduce to the vocabulary of Australian art a new title, You Beaut Country. This title was crucial to his subsequent success.

European influences in his work were fused to produce individual child-art type imagery expressed with a sophistication and panache, added to which was a strong, natural feeling for his Australian envionment. A wandering, child-like scawl of linear superstructure was imposed on a rich, free, colourful scumble of underpainting of alternating opaque and transparent passages. The colloquaially titled series, which began with Journey into You Beaut Country, summed up the attitude and drew attention to Olsen‚s Irish-inspired wit and his affection for the general character of Sydney and environs. In 1963 he designed a series of tapestries made in Portugal and the following year went to Europe to further his work in this field, returning to Sydney in 1967.

Until 1970 he conducted the Bakery Art School, Sydney, and in the same year received a commission from the Dobell Foundation to paint the Sydney Opera House mural Salute to Five Bells, inspired by a poem by Kenneth Slessor and completed in 1973. One year later he began a number of tours of Central Australia (1974-76) in company with the naturalist
Vincent Serventy, an experience that gave his map-like drawings a lyrical and ecological character. In 1978 he extended these travels to include Egypt, Kenya and South Africa. He became a trustee of the AGNSW in 1978 and both as practising artist and administrator has continued to excerpt great influence on art affairs of NSW.

His work was represented in the Bicentennial exhibition The Great Australian Art Exhibition and a major retrospective of his work was curated by the NGV and toured to other state galleries 1991-92.