Bio & Information
(Lithographic Print is from The Australian Opera’s 40th Anniversary Print Portfolio 1996)
John Coburn (Australian 1925-2006) Bio
John was an Australian abstract painter, teacher, tapestry designer and printmaker Born in Queensland, John moved from town to town with his mother and two younger sisters when his bank manager father went from branch to branch His father died when John was 10 While enlisted in the Royal Australian Navy during World War II, John travelled around the Pacific and Indian oceans as a radio operator He drew images from these places whilst aboard HMAS Nepal, including Sri Lanka, Papua New Guinea and others John studied art at East Sydney Technical College in 1947 He finished his four-year training dissatisfied
“I’d learned to paint portraits and landscapes and to draw from the human figure … but at the end I said, ‘So what; what’s it good for?”
By 1955–1956 John was starting to find his own style In 1969 he told The Canberra Times It’s a flat-patterned style of painting, using brilliant colour combinations based on natural or organic images John’s work his well-recognised with its array of motifs depicting Human Form & Nature, Animals, Wings, Fish, Retiles & Abstract Shapes In 1956 he joined the ABC when television came in He specialised in set design and artwork John taught art at East Sydney Technical College from 1959–1966 and he later became Head of the National Art School at the College for two years He won the Blake Prize for Religious Art twice, in 1960 and again in 1977 (shared with Rodney Milgate) In 1996 he won the Mandorla Art Award John lived and worked in France in the late 1960s and early 1970s, working jointly with the French workshop Aubusson, later also working with the ATW (Victorian Tapestry Workshop) two of his tapestries were hung in the Sydney Opera House, as curtains in the Drama Theatre and the (recently renamed) Joan Sutherland Theatre Seven hang in the John F. Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts, Washington D.C. plus Parliament House in Brisbane, National Australia Bank, Monash Medical Centre His works are also displayed in the Vatican Museum Rome plus many major galleries in Australia have collected and displayed John’s work with many of his works held in significant private and corporate collections, such as the Cbus Collection of Australian Art
