B. 1913 – 1986

A leader of Australia’s social realist movement, Noel Counihan’s life was marked by two entwined forces: art and politics. At sixteen, he left school to attend evening classes at the National Gallery of Victoria where through William Dolphin, he met a cohort of radical painters, writers, journalists, teachers and doctors. In 1933, firmly an activist, he locked himself in a cart on Sydney Road, Brunswick to decry the plight of the unemployed – an event that became legendary in the fight for free speech during the Great Depression. 

Over the subsequent decades, Counihan traveled widely, working as an illustrator, cartoonist and artist in England, New Zealand and the Soviet Union. He was a close compatriot of fellow social realist artists Yosl Bergner and Vic O’Connor, producing work that addressed the injustices of his lifetime: the Great Depression; World War Two; the Vietnam War; and the oppression of First Nations peoples. 

As an artist, Counihan’s achievements were vast. He is represented across public collections with the City of Meri-Bek’s council gallery named in his honour. At the twilight of his life, Counihan described his work as “my personal response to life… shape, form, colour, living people, human relations, nature in toto… my problems became more and more complex as I went on.”

To read a more in-depth biography of the artist, click here; to listen to James Gleeson’s interview with Counihan, click here.