Sidney Nolan: A Life

Description

Digging through the myths around Australia's most famous artist, many of which he created himself as a masterful self-promoter, this book is the biography that Sidney Nolan deserves. In an authoritative, insightful and often irreverent biography that fully charts Nolan's life and work, Nancy Underhill peels back the layers from a complicated, expedient and manipulative artistic genius. She carries the story from Nolan's birth in 1917 to his death in 1992, tracing his early life, his experience as a commercial artist, his involvement in the Angry Penguins magazine, his painting and set design, his difficult marriages and friendships with some of the twentieth century's most famous figures: Patrick White, Albert Tucker, Benjamin Britten, Robert Lowell, Stephen Spender and Kenneth Clark.

Dr Nancy Underhill is an author, curator and academic. She was Foundation Head of the Department of Art History at the University of Queensland, Australia and the inaugural director of the University Art Museum. Her books include Nolanon Nolan: Sidney Nolan in His Own Words (2007) and Letters of John Reed: Defining Australian Culture 1920-1981 (co-editor, 2001). Nancy has served on the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council, and chaired the Art Association of Australia and the Museums Association of Australia. She has been a visiting fellow at the Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University, and has been associated with the Menzies Centre of Australian Studies, King's College, London UK. For some years she assisted Mary Nolan with the Sidney Nolan Archive at The Rodd, Powys.