JOHN OLSEN

Please be patient whilst the gallery loads, then click to view enlargement. Scroll right to view other images.

John Olsen

John Olsen has since the 1970s sold almost 2300 works of art in the Australian auction market, in 2009 to date there has been 139 alone.

In 2006 Hobart, John Olsen's "Love in the Kitchen" sold for $1,075,500 at Auction

Born in Newcastle, 1928, John Olsen's place in Australian art is unchallenged

John Olsen is one of Australia's most significant and accomplished artists and is recognised for this both nationally and internationally for his energetic and distinctive art.

Olsen's name is widely associated with his exuberant and colloquial You Beaut Country series which firmly established his reputation in the early 1960s. He is also famous for his interpretation of Sydney harbour in his commission for the Sydney Opera House called The Salute to Five Bells undertaken in the 1970s.

Plants, birds and animals began to feature in his works during the 1970s and 80s when he travelled extensively across the country, giving new insights into Australia's regional and desert landscapes though he has always sought to capture a spiritual and universal dimension to the landscape and the natural world in his work.

Barry Pearce, head curator of Australian art at the Art Gallery of NSW, describes Olsen as "the king, the one who has defined the continent of his generation better than anyone else".

There have been other great Australian landscape painters during Olsen's time, says Pearce, "like Fred Williams and now William Robinson". But Olsen is "the poet of the brush. He's been brave enough to go out into the interior of Australia and embrace it with love, absorb himself in it like a true poet." In an Olsen you can recognise "the topography" despite "the felicity of his brush". What's more, says Pearce, "He's been getting better. His last few shows have proved he's a real genius."

Olsen has won many awards including the Archibald Prize in 2004 for his self-portrait, the Wynne Prize in 1969 and 1985, he also received an Order of Australia (A.O.) in 2001. In 1977 he was awarded the O.B.E. for services to the Arts and in 1993 he was awarded an Australian Creative Fellowship.

John Olsen's work is represented in all Australian state gallery collections, the National Gallery of Australia and regional galleries Australia-wide. He is also represented in institutional, corporate and private collections in Australia, Asia, the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States of America. He is probably best known for his huge Salute to five bells, a 70 x 10 foot mural in the northern foyer of the Sydney Opera House.

John Olsen Limited Edition Etchings and Works on Paper from Etching House.

THE EXTENT OF JOHN OLSON’S talent was recognized when he exhibited in the 'Direction 1’ exhibition held in 1956 at Macquarie Galleries, Sydney. Immediately following this influential exhibition he left the shores of Australia and embarked on a three-year privately sponsored journey to Europe. He sailed on the Orion in December 1956. After six weeks travelling via Cape Town and the Canary Islands, he arrived in London in January 1957.

Olsen remembers, 'It was a bleak winter's day and the atmosphere was rather depressing'. Several months later, after a brief visit to Cornwall, he travelled to Paris and was re-acquainted with an old art school friend, Earle Backen. Backen was studying with the English-born printmaker S.W. Hayter in Montparnasse. Olsen, impressed by Hayter's philosophy and methods, immediately signed up and began working in one of die most advanced print workshops in the world - Stanley Hayter's Atelier 17'.

Olsen was twenty-eight years old. He had already studied at the best art schools Sydney had to offer: firstly with Desiderius Orban for ten weeks at Circular Quay and then, from 1950 to 1953, at Julian Ashton's at The Rocks. Interestingly, both these schools were right on Sydney Harbour, a theme that was to stay with Olsen all his life. It was at the Julian Ashton Art School that Olsen began to develop his life-long dedication to drawing. His teacher, John Passmore, was relentless in his demands for graphic veracity. All had to be examined - anatomy, bones and die muscular - and understood in the terms of function. Graphic marks are the essence of Olsen's work, be they in prints or in large paintings such as Spanish Encounter in die Art Gallery of New South Wales or his Five Bells in die Sydney Opera House.
Orban had worked in Paris at the time Cubism was breaking through. He claimed to have known Picasso and became quite famous as a teacher of a colourful blend of Post-Impressionist and Cubist styles. He advocated the idea that creativity was achieved through a balance of the perceived and die spiritual worlds; ideas that would later fuel Olsen's interest in Zen Buddhism. But it was really John Passmore, whom Olsen met at Ashton's, who made a lasting impression, 'I am eternally grateful for his encouragement in my student years', says Olsen, 'Passmore had great insights into the subtleties of drawing'.
Olsen was doing it tough at the time. He was up at four in the morning cleaning offices before starting classes at eight thirty. The curriculum at Ashton's centred on life drawing on Monday and Friday, life-painting on Wednesday, and evening classes three times a week. On his days off Olsen could be found in the life-drawing classes of Godfrey Miller at the East Sydney Technical College.

Orban. Miller. Passmore. These were magic names for anyone aspiring to become an artist in the 1950s and early 1960s in Sydney. Orban had die style of a Hungarian patrician (appropriately so);

Miller had a private income. He lived as a recluse in Paddington, and was one of the most eccentric artists ever to lift a pencil in Sydney.

In the studio Olsen was working it out. His first major series, die key works of die fifties, were his 'Bicycle Boys'. Here he took the Orban/ Miller/Passmore inheritance right to the edge. It was art abstracted from realism (dial is, if you take 'realism' to mean aspects of die perceived world) to which Olsen added a map, or chart of the spiritual responses to such physical stimuli. Olsen's line had started as a walk that was soon to become a run, and by 1960 - in his triumphal painting of his memories of Spain entitled Spanish Encounter - it became a ball-tearing, testosterone-packed gallop.

Olsen's bicycles, however, had their familiarity of paired figures. These were initially influenced by the horse and rider drawings and sculptures of the Italian master, Marino Marini, and the film, The Bicycle Thief, by Vittorio de Sica. Yet Olsen's bicycles still described at one moment in time, from a single viewpoint, a frozen instant or episode - not the whole journey described from numerous moments in time and different viewpoints. These images were still cycling through nineteenth century space as prescribed by Cezanne and Passmore. But, the race had begun. His bicycles provided both structure and story; line and mass; armature and flesh. Line is offered as a framework on which those rectilinear forms are rubbed and scrubbed.

What was actually happening was a de-figuring of painting, releasing it from the outline of the perceived world. Mark-making was still a profusion of short staccato strokes, like Cezanne who always seemed unsure of how many commas to use, or when to stop the painting. It was a dry, intellectual process of reiteration in the studio of the styles of Keith Vaughan in London (whom Passmore had known when they both worked at die Lintas advertising agency) and across the channel in the paintings of Vieira da Silva, Manessier, Bazaine and others of the School of Paris.

There were many other influences around at die time. Students at Ashton's and East Sydney Technical School fingered the pages of Werner Haftmann's monograph on Paul Klee. Everyone wanted to take a 'line for a walk', paint a magic square, and make the invisible visible as advocated by this Swiss whiz Paul Klee, Bauhaus master and author of the influential text, The Thinking Eye. Kandinsky's On the Spiritual in Art was popular also. It was, as the Australian art critic Robert Hughes recalled decades later -in his book Nothing if not Critical (1990) - as if... there is no tyranny like the tyranny of the unseen masterpiece ... .In Australia we had art schools teaching people how to paint Cezannes, but our museums had no Cezannes to show us'.
So, when Sydney businessman, Robert Shaw, offered the possibility of private sponsorship for Olsen to work in Europe, to study in the flesh die paintings he had only seen in reproduction, there was no hesitation on his part.

Here is a list of works released by John Olsen -

Afternoon '04

Art World ' 05

LIFE CLASS ' 06

Artist & Fish Bowl ' 06

Being Young 2000

Being Young 2000 (mono colour)

Belly Dancer ‘01

Bird and Grasshopper '02

Bird and Tea Pot 2000

Bondi Icebergs 2007

Boy and Waterfall ‘01

Camel 2000

Camel '04

Cats Dinner ' 06

Cormorant at the Barrage

Crow and Tea Pot (mono colour) 2000

Dingos at Night

Dinner ' 05

Dragonfly & Frogs '05

Don't kill that fly.. ‘07

Emus at the Coorong ' 04

Fat Cat '05 (2 Colours)

Feeding the Cats ‘05 (2 Colours)

Filleting '04

Fish 2000

Fish (blue - small) '04

Fish Kettle '02

Frog (small) ‘04

Frog and Hand 2000

Frog Pond 04

Frog Surprised '02

Girl and Fish '02

Girl and Sea Objects ‘02

Hand and Watch 2000

Heatwave ‘01

Heron and Frog ‘01

Landscape near Coolah

Landscape with Hare '01

Life Class ‘01

LIFE CLASS ' 06 - Set of 8 Etchings

Lily Pond ' 06

Lucio's '03

Mating ' 05 (2 colours)

Mistaken Identity ' 05

Mother and Child 2000

Murray River Barrage '06

Nude and fish bowl '02

Octopus ‘04

Owl '05 (PJPA)

Owl (small) ‘01

Owl ' 03

Owl II ' 03

Paella (Small) ‘04

Paella ‘04

Pelican ‘05

Pelicans & Chicks ‘04

Penguin '04

***Rainy Morning '05

Scrub Turkey & King Leopold Ranges

Spider Monkey and Apple 2000

Spider Monkeys I 2000

Spider Monkeys II 2000

Still Life I '04 (2 colours)

Still Life II ‘04 (2 colours)

Summer at Owls wood (10images)

Sydney Harbour Seaport of Desire'02

The Bouquet ' 03

The Bridge ' 04

The Catch ' 05

The Critic ' 05 (2 colours)

The Escape ‘02

The Fish (black) ‘02

The Gourmet ‘03

The Prawn '02

The Quay ' 03

The Sea ‘04

Three Graces ' 06

Toad Fish ‘04

Waiting '01

Waterfall '01

This is a detailed list showing Titles and Sizes of John Olsen Limited edition fine art coloured collectable prints available from Etching House,

All fine art prints are signed and titled by John Olsen.

Sydney Sun 82.0 x 108.0 or 107.5 x 142.1,

Tropical Lily Pond 59.0 x 137.0,

Popping Blue Bottles 89.0 x 96.0 or 108.5 x 116.6,

Spring at Rydal 59.2 x 120.2 or 89.0 x 185.0,

The Little River 92.5 x 89.0 or 113.8 x 109.4,

Broken Egg & Summer Landscape 96.3 x 110.0 or 109.3 x 124.9,

Poet's Garden 84.6 x 109.0 or 108.3 x 140.0,

Lily Pond 2004 89.6 x 102.0 or 109.7 x 125.0,

Lake Eyre 2004 89.6 x 95.3 or 109.0 x 116.0,

Wet Season 93.0 x 89.6 or 113.6 x 109.4,

Onkaparinga Hills, Blue Wren & Fox SA 83.0 x 104.0 or 109.0 x 137.0,

Spoonbill and Egret 79.8 x 107.0,

Jacanas - The Christ Bird 80.4 x 107.0,

Waterbirds 80.6 x 107.0,

Cormorant and Jacanas 83.0 x 107.0 N/A,

Lake Eyre 1975 95.5 x 89.6 or 116.8 x 109.5,

Wetlands 2000 84.4 x 103.0,

Wetlands 1985 84.8 x 110 or 104.0 x 135.3,

Frogs and Banana Leaf 93.5 x 89.2 or 114.7 x 109.4

The Following list indicates the limited edition sizes available of John Olsen fine art prints,

250 editions