COBURN, JOHN (1925-2006)

Name: COBURN, JOHN (1925-2006)
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**ON HOLD - EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST**

"Surry Hills Landscape" (1949)

oil on canvas

60 x 74cm

signed lower right

*Strath Group Exhibition, 1949

*The Sun (21 October 1949)

*Charles Lloyd Jones Collection

*Rudy Komon Collection

*Ray Hughes Collection

*private collection, Adelaide

Coburn was a famous Australian Post War artist. Born in Queensland, after serving in the RAN during WWII, Coburn studied at East Sydney Tech, where he later taught. He held his first one-man show in 1957 at the Gallery of Contemporary Art in Melbourne, & a year later his first exhibition with Australian Galleries. Coburn is best known for his striking abstract works which celebrate the colour & forms of the Australian landscape. In Coburn’s unique symbolic language, bright shapes float over fields of often intense colour, expressing an emotional response to the harmony & vibrant rhythms of nature. Passionate about the work of artists such as Matisse, Picasso & Léger, he forged his own style of distinctive flat, coloured shapes to express the mysteries of life. A two-time winner of the Blake Prize (1960 & 77), Coburn was also included in exhibitions at the Whitechapel & Tate Galleries in London (1961 & 62) & produced two tapestries for the Sydney Opera House in 1970. Coburn’s work has been included in significant Australian survey exhibitions in New York, Japan & Europe & is represented in the NGA, all state galleries & many regional & University collections.

This unusual, Drysdale-inspired painting, completely foreign to the abstract style in which he is best remembered for, is one of the Coburn's first artworks, completed whilst a student at the East Sydney Tech (National Art School). It was painted around the time he visited William Dobell in his studio, one of his first artistic inspirations. It was exhibited in the Strath Group exhibition, and given special mention in "The Sun" (21 Oct '49). It was purchased by Charles Lloyd Jones, owner of David Jones, then owned by legendary art dealer Rudy Komon, & then another respected art dealer, Ray Hughes. It has been reproduced in both major Coburn publications, & is recognised as his earliest work outside the family collection.