1. Noel Jack Counihan was an Australian social realist painter, printmaker, cartoonist and illustrator active in the 1940s and 1950s in Melbourne.
16 Facts About Noel Counihan
1. 2.
An atheist, communist, and art activist, Counihan made art in response to the politics and social hardships of his times.
3.
Noel Counihan is regarded as one of Australia's major artists of the 20th century.
4.
Noel Counihan was born on 4 October 1913 in Albert Park, then a working-class suburb of Melbourne.
5.
Noel Counihan attended the St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne Choir school, then Caulfield Grammar School in 1928.
6.
Social realism, the belief that art should reflect the realities of society under capitalism, was the artistic doctrine of the Communist Party of Australia, and in 1931 Noel Counihan became a confirmed atheist and a member of the Party.
7.
Noel Counihan helped found the Workers Art Guild, and began printmaking, producing linocuts and lithographs for Communist magazine covers and pamphlets as well as designing banners.
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Roy Cazaly 8.
From 1934 Noel Counihan worked as a cartoonist for various publications, including The Bulletin and the Communist Party's paper, the Guardian, from 1945 to 1949 and again from 1952 to 1958.
9.
Noel Counihan spent extended periods in hospital with tuberculosis during World War II.
10.
Noel Counihan developed a personal style based on the social realist approach, producing compassionate images of workers and their working lives.
11.
Noel Counihan maintained that the artist had a duty to "gather information from the political developments of the time".
12.
Noel Counihan's 1955 painting On Parliament Steps won the George Crouch Memorial Prize in 1956.
13.
Noel Counihan remained loyal to the Communist Party during its various splits and despite its declining support in the 1970s and 1980s.
14.
In 1979, Noel Counihan contributed the entry on footballer Roy Cazaly to volume 7 of the Australian Dictionary of Biography.
15.
On 5 July 1986, Noel Counihan died in Canterbury, Melbourne, aged 72.
16.
The Noel Counihan Gallery, managed by City of Merri-bek Council, is named in his honour.