Two-time Archibald Prize winner Brett Whiteley AO displayed a brilliant talent for drawing as a child. After studying half-heartedly at art school, he travelled to Europe on a scholarship. In London he excited art dealers and fell under the influence of painters such as Francis Bacon. Whiteley remained in Europe for the next decade, exhibiting his work regularly in group exhibitions in London, Paris, Amsterdam and Berlin, and establishing an international reputation for his vivid, large-scale interiors and landscapes. While he worked across painting, printmaking and sculpture, he was essentially a draughtsman with drawing at the core of his practice. In particular, exaggeration, elongation, motion and distorted perspectives were strategies used throughout his oeuvre. Whiteley made many trips to Paris, and in 1989 he spent two months in an apartment on Rue de Tournon. This self portrait may date from this period, and showcases his incessant desire to draw, reducing himself to organic free-flowing lines and abstraction.
Gift of Patrick Corrigan AM 2010. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
© Wendy Whiteley
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