Australia’s oldest working artist Guy Warren dies, aged 103

Australia’s oldest working artist and former Archibald winner Guy Warren has died overnight at the age of 103.

“We are saddened to hear of the passing of Guy Warren this morning,” King Street Gallery, the Sydney gallery that represents him, announced on Instagram.

Guy Warren with Peter Wegner’s ‘Guy Warren at 100’, winner of the Archibald Prize 2021.Credit: AGNSW; Felicity Jenkins

“A consummate painter, educator, humanist and lover of life, Guy’s work expressed the beauty and depth of an artist imbued with a visionary aesthetic,” it said.

“He was kind, nurturing, funny and incredibly knowledgeable – with a strong desire to share his love of art and the surrounding world with others.

“Guy will be greatly missed and remembered in the art world. Our thoughts are with his two children, Paul and Joanna, about whom Guy said, ‘they are the best thing I ever made’,” the post said.

The Sydney artist from Greenwich had a studio in Leichhardt, which he drove to daily. He studied art at the National Art School and also taught at University of Wollongong.

Guy Warren with his 1985 Archibald Prize-winning painting of his friend, the sculptor Bert Flugelman.Credit: Fairfax Media

Warren was the 1985 Archibald winner with a portrait of friend and fellow artist Bert Flugelman, Flugelman with Wingman.

He was also the subject of the 2021 Archibald winning portrait by Melbourne painter Peter Wegner, in the portrait prize’s centenary year.

Born in Goulburn in 1921, the same year the prize began, he left school in 1935 at the age of 14 and got a job as an assistant proofreader on The Bulletin.

In his own centenary year, he was celebrated with a succession of events: King Street Gallery on William showed his new work; the National Art School had an overview of his drawings, Gallery Lane Cove hosted a survey show and there were others at the University of Wollongong and the Nicholas Thompson Gallery in Melbourne.

Guy Warren, The Fall of Icarus, 1994.Credit: National Art School

In 1994, Warren undertook the largest drawing ever attempted in Australia. He used a Cessna, a cloudless sky over Sydney Harbour and vapour, sun and wind for his sky drawing of Icarus, a figure of Greek mythology said to have escaped from Crete with wings of wax and feathers who flew so high his wings melted. It was repeated over Armidale and in 2005 above the ocean at Bondi.

His works have also been exhibited as finalists in the Dobell Prize, and he received the Trustees Watercolour Award at the Wynne Prize in 1980.

In 1939, he volunteered with the Australian Imperial Force to fight in World War II. It was during the war years that Warren discovered his artistic vocation.

“Most people in the army are bored out of their minds,” he told this masthead. “You spent your time sitting round, or doing jobs like packing up or cleaning latrines.”

Warren spent his war years filling sketchbooks with drawings, especially from his time posted in Bougainville, in Papua New Guinea.

Warren before his first show at the National Art School, aged 100, in 2021. Credit: Louie Douvis

There, he drew the landscape, soldiers at work and play, Japanese prisoners of war, and the local people with headdresses and body decorations. This interest in Papua New Guinea led to his friendship with a young BBC producer, David Attenborough, who became a lifelong friend.

He married Joy in 1950 and the couple moved to London, where he worked in the post office while doing art in his spare time. In the UK, he became friends with fellow Australian artist Fred Williams.

Guy Warren, Coffee Line, American airforce unit, Nadzab, New Guinea 1944.Credit: National Art School

In a 2021 profile on the occasion of his 100th birthday, Warren told The Sydney Morning Herald art critic John McDonald: “I still feel like I did when I was 55 or even 35 – there’s no difference. People talk about embracing the dignity of old age. F--- the dignity of old age! I don’t want to know anything about it.

“If anyone thinks you should go into an old people’s home while you’re capable of doing what you’ve always been doing, you should tell them to go get nicked. Retirement is an absurdity! I’ve never understood the idea. People see it as the point where they can stop working and do what they’ve always wanted to do – but then they find it’s far too late! Give me another 10 years and I might start thinking about retirement.”

Warren lived at home in Greenwich with his son, Paul, and is understood to have gone to palliative care only this past week.

A host of Australian artists, including this year’s Archibald winner, Laura Jones, paid tribute.

Lucy Culliton, a regular Archibald, Wynne and Sulman finalist, said: “Sad to hear the machine that was Guy Warren has stopped.”

Art Gallery of NSW’s head curator of Australian art, Wayne Tunnicliffe, said he was sad to hear of Warren’s death, “but what a rich and long life to celebrate”.

“While Guy’s art often included human figures, he essentially painted with great lyricism in an abstract expressionist style,” Tunnicliffe said. “Inspired by the natural world, he sought to express how humankind and nature are deeply entwined.”

National Art School chief executive Steven Alderton said Warren was “effervescent, enigmatic and the soul and core” of what NAS stood for. “A big part of Australian art and Sydney art history has just left this earth. We will miss him dearly but are heartened to think of his legacy to thousands of artists he inspired, mentored and taught over many generations,” he said.

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