Web Quotableonline.com Frasescelebres.org Greatbookscollection.org

Noel Counihan (born October 4, 1913 - Died July 5,
1986)

Australian painter and Social Realism|social
realist artist.

Noel Counihan was born in Melbourne, Victoria
(Australia)|Victoria, Australia. He studied
part-time under Charles Wheeler (painter)|Charles
Wheeler at the National Gallery Art School,
Melbourne, during 1930-31, where he met the Social
Realism|social realists Herbert McClintock and Roy
Dalgarno. 

In 1931 Counihan became a confirmed atheist and a
member of the Communist Party of Australia and
helped found the Workers Art Guild.  He began
printmaking, producing linocuts and lithographs
for communist magazine covers and pamphlets as
well as designing banners.

He participated in the Great Depression free
speech fights in Brunswick, Victoria. Dozens of
members of the Unemployed Workers Movement were
arrested and unemployed meetings at the
intersection of Phoenix street and Sydney Road,
Brunswick were dispersed by police. As part of
this fight, a young Noel Counihan addressed a
crowd from a locked cage on top a truck. Police
had to cut him out, to the jeers of the crowd, as
he continued speaking.

From 1934 Counihan worked as a cartoonist for
various publications, including the Bulletin and
the Melbourne Guardian 1945-9 and 1952-8. He spent
extended periods in hospital with tuberculosis
during the WWII|Second world war. With the
encouragement of the artist Yosl Bergner, he began
to paint. He developed a Social Realism|social
realist approach, producing compassionate images
of workers and their working lives. 

Counihan maintained that the artist had a duty to
'gather information from the political
developments of the time'. 

He died in Melbourne on July 5, 1986, aged 73. The
Counihan Gallery, managed by City of Moreland
Council, is named in his honour. A short distance
away, outside the Brunswick Mechanics Institute on
Sydney Road, a Free Speech memorial was built to
commemorate the free speech fights by the
unemployed in 1933 and Noel Counihan's part in
them.

Works include The Cough… stone dust (1947), A
Metal Pourer (1948), Eureka 1854 -1954 linocuts
(1954) Sunset Dance (1968), Image of Lear
lithographs (1977) Face I (1978),

==External links==

*http://www.takver.com/art/art31.htm Art: The
Alternative Tradition
*http://www.arts.uwa.edu.au/LW/waywewere/counihan.
html The University of Western Australia Art
Collection - Noel Counihan
artist-stub