Bio
Brett Whitely (Australian 1939-1992) Bio
Brett Whiteley was Born on the 7th of April 1939 at Paddington Sydney
In his younger years he was sent to boarding school in Bathurst and also Scots Collage in Sydney. Whitely started working as a artist in the studio of the Lintas Advertising Agency in Sydney and participated in John Santry’s sketch club which at that time discovered Lloyd Rees a local artist who lived near Longueville.
After getting inspiration from his work he wrote to his mother asking her to find a second-hand easel as well as books on the works of Augustus John and Jacob Epstein. He developed an he was fascinated how certain artists, including Dobell, Rees and Vincent Van Gogh, viewed their motifs and expressed them in there paintings.
Around 1958 he started travelling around NSW during that time, Whiteley met his future wife, art student Wendy Susan Julius. He painted many scenes in the areas and in 1959 he won the Italian Government Travelling Art Scholarship, which was judged by Australian artist Russell Drysdale at the Art Gallery of NSW
After that, He went to Italy around February 1960 and stayed in Europe for the next ten years holding exhibitions in London, Paris, Amsterdam and Berlin and establishing an international reputation. He also had a brief period of time spent in the USA. He married his wife Wendy on the 27th March 1962 at the Chelsea register office in the USA and spent several months honeymooning in France.
Whiteley begain to move away from his early abstractions into a bathroom series, reflecting an admiration for the French painter Pierre Bonnard. The series celebrated the curves of female subjects as a medium of sexual desire. This desire had a dark side. Stirred by the death of his father, he later moved to take inspiration from his friend Francis Bacon and developed another series based on the London Zoo
In 1976 he won both the Archibald Prize for portraiture and the Sulman Prize for genre painting and, the following year, the Wynne Prize for landscape. He won all three prizes in 1978 (the first artist to do so) and the Wynne a third time in 1984.
Both Brett and his wife Wendy had drug addictions in 1985 That year Whiteley purchased a defunct t-shirt factory that he converted into a residence and studio, Brett and Wendy travelled to a drug addiction clinic in London. Only Wendy followed it through successfully, leading to separation in 1989.
Whiteley’s Works reached the greatest ecstasy imaginable, but also included a darker side. He Painted many collections about politics, his world views and figures in the art community and also the world.
His works are heldin privet collectios, gallerys, museums and excibitions around the world and has accredited himself as a World-class artist and is one of Australia’s most celebrated artists.
In 1991 he was awarded an Order of Australia and died one year later.
