Charles Blackman
- Date of birth
- 1928
- Date of death
- 2018
- Notes
- Charles Blackman was born in Sydney in 1938. He left school at 15 and, although untrained in art, created an international reputation for his drawings, watercolours, oils and graphics. Blackman was always sketching as a child, and his mother thought he might become a cartoonist, so she found him a job on the Sydney Sun. There he worked as a sub-editor's copy boy for three years before quitting to wander the eastern seaboard. Eventually, he landed in Brisbane where he met his first wife Barbara, who suffered a degenerative blindness and when they settled in Melbourne with their three children, Blackman survived as an artist on his wife's pension. Official recognition eluded him until he was awarded the Rowney Prize for drawing in 1959, swiftly followed by a successful exhibition at the Johnson Gallery, and simultaneously the award of the Helena Rubenstein Scholarship in 1960. The latter was to prove a remarkable year since he also won the Dyeson Endowment Award and the Crouch Prize. Blackman spent quite some time in London and his work was included in the Whitechapel Open Exhibition in 1961 and Tate Gallery exhibitions of Australian Art 1962/3. Blackman has since had exhibitions at every major international art centre. By 1977, Blackman's status amongst Australian contemporary painters was such that an OBE was conferred on him 'for services to art'. In 1993 the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, staged the first major retrospective of Blackman's work, 'Schoolgirls and Angels' which toured to Brisbane, Sydney and Perth. Source: http://www.cookshill.com/hmri/artists/charles_blackman_bio.html
Works in the collection
Charles Blackman
Charles Blackman
Charles Blackman
Charles Blackman