Charles Blackman, one of the most recognised Australian artists of the postwar era, has died
One of the most recognised Australian artists of the postwar era, Charles Blackman, has died a week after celebrating his 90th birthday.
Charles Blackman, one of the most recognised Australian artists of the postwar era, has died in Sydney a week after his family celebrated his 90th birthday.
His son Auguste Blackman said Blackman died at 5.30am this morning.
Blackman was best known for his Alice in Wonderland pictures in which his former wife Barbara was depicted as Alice, surrounded by teapots and white rabbits. Barbara had introduced Blackman to the classic works of literature and they first listened to Lewis Carroll’s tale of Alice and the topsy-turvy world on a talking book.
Between 1956 and 1957, he painted more than 30 Alice pictures and they became the most recognisable examples of Blackman’s strongly coloured, narrative art.
“Charles painted our dreams,” Auguste Blackman said today. “The dream of his life was the dream of all our lives.”
Blackman had dementia and required home care for many years. He moved into an aged care facility earlier this year.
He stopped painting years ago but he continued to draw, using coloured pens. As he marked his 90th birthday his family was preparing for an exhibition to include past paintings and new sculptures made from Blackman’s original maquettes, as well as some of his drawings.
Blackman grew up in Sydney and started his career as a press artist at the Sydney Sun where he drew outlines for Ginger Meggs cartoons. Superb draughtsmanship continued to be a feature of his work. He moved to Brisbane in 1948 where he met the young writer Barbara Patterson, and they married in 1952.
The couple moved to Melbourne where Blackman became part of the Heide circle of artists. With artists including Arthur Boyd, John Brack and Robert Dickerson he was part of the Antipodeans who rejected the current vogue for abstract expressionism, in favour of figurative art.
In London in the 1960s on a Helena Rubenstein Travelling Scholarship, his work was shown in prominent exhibitions of Australian art at the Whitechapel Gallery and the Tate.
In 1993 he was honoured with a retrospective exhibition Charles Blackman: Schoolgirls and Angels at the National Gallery of Victoria, which then travelled around the country.
