PUGH, CLIFTON (1924-1990)

"Icarus and Sturt Rose in Bungle Bungles" (1986)
limited edition hand-coloured etching, ed. 32/40
35 x 50cm
Signed lower right
*private collection, Sydney
 
Clifton Ernest Pugh AO was a leading, multiple Archibald Prize-winning Australian Artist, Portraitist & Environmentalist. Inspired by the Expressionists, Pugh is best known for his portrait and landscape works, which rather than just fixating on likeness, express something profound about their subject. He was particularly noted for painting some of Australia's most important political and cultural figures, such as Gough Whitlam, Harold Holt (the year he disappeared), Neville Wran & Barry Humphries. In the late 1950s he established the influential artist’s community ‘Dunmoochin’. Instrumental in Australia’s conservation movement, the Dunmoochins worked to regenerate the land, witnessing first-hand the degradation caused by feral animals. Across his career, Pugh won the Archibald Prize three times, was made an Officer of Order of Australia in 1985 and in 1990 was appointed Australia’s War Memorial’s official artist at the 75th anniversary celections of the Gallipoli landing. In 2005 was honoured with a retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery, Melbourne, the catalogue essay of which recalls Pugh’s aptitude for capturing his sitter’s inner character. Whether the landscape or undulating plains of human life, his contributions to art were uncompromising, unique and bracing.