{"id":424,"date":"2021-07-22T11:59:36","date_gmt":"2021-07-22T11:59:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themccorrycollection.com\/tmc\/db\/?p=424"},"modified":"2021-08-01T05:20:12","modified_gmt":"2021-08-01T05:20:12","slug":"david-boyd-1924-2011-biography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themccorrycollection.com\/tmc\/db\/david-boyd-1924-2011-biography\/","title":{"rendered":"David Boyd (1924 \u2013 2011) Biography"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

David Fielding Gough Boyd OAM (1924 \u2013 2011)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

David entered the Melba Memorial Conservatorium of Music in Melbourne at seventeen, after 12 months at the conservatorium he was conscripted into the army during World War II.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Upon his return, he studied art at the National Gallery School<\/a> on an ex-serviceman’s grant. Both David and brother Guy gained success as a potters with the establishment of Martin Boyd Pottery in the 1950s, entrenching themselves as part of the Boyd family artistic dynasty<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Boyd artistic dynasty began with David\u2019s Grandparents Emma Minnie Boyd nee \u00e0 Beckett (also known as Minnie) and Arthur Merric Boyd both accomplished and recognized artists in 1880\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arthur and Minnie had five children the the second being William Merric Boyd (Merric), known as the father of Australian studio pottery. In 1915 Merric married Doris Gough and they had also five children Arthur, Lucy, Guy, David and Mary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fourth child of the Merric and Doris Boyd, David and with his talented siblings Arthur, Guy, Lucy and Mary spent they childhood at the family farm, Open Country in Murrumbeena, Victoria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1949 David married Hermia Jones a sculpture student, together they set up a pottery studio in a shed in Elizabeth Bay. They became widely known as leading Australian potters, introducing new glazing techniques and using a potter’s wheel for shaping sculptural figures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

David began his painting career in 1957 with a series of symbolic paintings on Australian explorers, this series at the time aroused much controversy, because of the focus on the tragic history of the Aboriginal Tasmanians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1958 he exhibited a series of artworks based on the histological episodes in the explorations of Burke and Wills plus Bass and Flinders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He became one of the seven members of Bernard Smith\u2019s Antipodean<\/a> group of figurative artists, joining his elder brother Arthur Boyd, Sidney Nolan<\/a>, John Brack, Robert Dickerson<\/a>, John Perceval, and Clifton Pugh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After winning an Italian Art Scholarship from the Contemporary Art Society of Australia in 1961, David and his family moved to Rome in 1961, and later moved to London. They also spent several years creating art in Spain and the south of France returning permanently to Australia in 1975<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having won significant international recognition, David was invited by the Commonwealth Institute of Art, London, to hold a retrospective of paintings at their Art Gallery in 1969.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the introduction to the catalogue written by Professor Bernard Smith the then Professor of Contemporary Art in the University of Sydney<\/a> summed up the work and position of David Boyd in the Australian art scene when he wrote<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis exhibition represents a personal victory over fashion. For ten years David Boyd has painted against the current mainstream and for ten years Australian critics subjected his art to severe criticism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But during the last twelve months or so the hostility has weakened; revised opinions are beginning to appear. What was really at issue was not so much the quality of the paintings as the validity of his position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moral values, the human condition, might well have inspired so it was argued, great art in the past. But painting had now exhausted these positions. They were no longer available for the artist of the nineteen sixties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The criticism has not mattered much. David Boyd has continued to paint in his own personal manner and to find an audience and a growing market for his art in Australia and Britain. He has found that there is still a place for a moral painter.\u201d (The Art of David Boyd, Nancy Benko, Hyde Park Press 1973)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1971, after more than a decade of success in London, David, Hermia and their three daughters returned to Sydney, where he continued to create passionate paintings as well as works of lyrical delicacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Noisy airplanes, represented by cockatoos, became the subject of some of his later paintings. Between 1993-1996 Boyd was artist-in-residence at the School of Law, Macquarie University, Sydney<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"David<\/figure>
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David was one of Australia\u2019s most prolific artist, who developed a personal style, that combined figurative painting with surrealism, social realism, expressionism, mythical and universal themes of innocence and evil, destruction and creation.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In a September 2004 art review, Alex McDonald of State of the Arts magazine stated that David Boyd’s work was ‘ahead of his time in addressing the mistreatment of Indigenous people in Australia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But commented that an ‘explanation for his frosty reception from Australian critics and dealers may have something to do with his choice of subject matter’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McDonald explained that the controversy may have stemmed from the fact that the ‘legal system, race relations and religion’ are ‘not exactly popular issues’ and were not ‘up for debate in the late 1950s’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

David Boyd a buoyant, witty man, known for his informality, friendliness and generosity, he maintained his quiet but strenuous daily routine in the studio where he worked in\u201d controlled chaos\u201d, right up to 2005.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In June 2008 David was awarded an OAM for his services to art as a painter and an innovator of design and technique in pottery and ceramic sculpture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Appointments and awards<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  • President of the Contemporary Art Society \u2013 Victorian branch (1960)<\/li>
  • Elected Councilor of the Museum of Modern Art of Australia (1960)<\/li>
  • First Prize Italian Art Scholarship for Australian Chairman of the Federal Council of the Contemporary Art Society of Australia (1961)<\/li>
  • Artist-in-residence at the School of Law, Macquarie University, NSW (1993\u201396)<\/li>
  • MEMBRO ALBO DORO DEL SENATO ACCADEMICO \u2013 International Academy of Modern Art, Rome, Italy (1998)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    His Works are Represented in<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    • Australian National Gallery Canberra.<\/li>
    • All State and many regional galleries.<\/li>
    • The Mertz collection, USA.<\/li>
    • The Power Collection, Sydney<\/li>
    • And many major international galleries and private collections in Australia and overseas.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
      \n
      <\/div>