Sidney Nolan

Sidney Nolan, arguably the greatest Australian artist in the Western tradition, is best known for his 1940s and 1950s paintings of Ned Kelly, iconic outlaw of the Australian outback. In these powerful and original paintings the extraordinary Australian landscape itself plays a formidable part. But the Kelly series formed just a fraction of Nolan’s prodigious output. He was an impassioned artist who worked almost up to his death in 1992, still experimenting, still intellectually curious, still playful. This book, with its wealth of illustrations — 270 in color, including five polyptychs on foldouts — is the first to cover Nolan’s entire career, from his early paintings to the enormous, multi-paneled works known collectively as Oceania. Some series, like Ned Kelly, center on the heroic and tragic figures of Australian history — the shipwrecked Mrs. Fraser, the explorers Burke and Wills, the soldiers at Gallipoli, the miners of the Eureka Stockade — while others are based on ancient myths such as Leda and the Swan or Oedipus and the Sphinx. Nolan, restless in mind and body, was a constant traveler, and the book reproduces paintings from his journeys in Australia, Europe, the United States, Africa, Antarctica, and Asia. This is also the first book to deal fully with Nolan’s multi-faceted work as a painter of literary themes, and as a book illustrator, theater designer, and sculptor.