Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1914 Melbourne, Australia

Died: 1999 Melbourne, Australia

Year of Migration to the UK: 1947

Biography

Painter Albert Lee Tucker was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1914. He left school at the age of 15, winning a scholarship to a commercial art school which enabled him to support himself during the difficult economic climate of the 1930s. In his spare time, he attended life classes at the Victorian Art Society for the rest of the decade. Along with fellow artists George Bell, Sidney Nolan and John Reed, he co-founded the Contemporary Art Society, participating in the inaugural exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1938. After viewing the 1939 Herald exhibition of French and British contemporary art, his work was significantly influenced by Surrealism and, disenchanted with the conservative local art scene, he joined the post-war exodus of artists hungry for the first-hand experience of European art, leaving for England in 1947. On his departure, he observed: ‘I am a refugee from Australian culture’.

Tucker’s first stay in London was tinged with disappointment and failure. The Surrealist-Expressionist language of his paintings jarred with the UK establishment at that time, and in consequence, he met with almost universal indifference in what he termed the ‘chilly, proper London art world’. When he arrived, he found London a bleak place, scarred by bombing, and with rationing still in force. Finding lodgings at 188 Edgware Road, he stayed five months, during which time he painted five oils and a number of gouache and pastel drawings, but he found it difficult to settle. He set about making contacts within the art world, attending an opening at Arthur Tooth's London Gallery, where he met Dennis Matthews, secretary of the English Contemporary Art Society, who invited him to see Sir Kenneth Clark’s collection (though not to meet Clark himself). After less than a month Tucker wrote to John Reed in Melbourne that UK artists were 'gutless … pale imitations of Oscar Wilde' and he had seen no paintings that compared to the best of those in Melbourne. By December, he declared that the British were 'driving him to distraction, constantly refusing to make any commitment in relation to his paintings'. He continued to try to interest London commercial galleries in his work without success. The Lefevre Gallery informed him that 'they were not interested in Surrealism or Expressionism', while Oliver Brown, Director of the Leicester Galleries, admitted to astonishment that such painting should have come out of Australia, and told him that they did not have a market 'for that kind of thing'. The Redfern and Mayor Galleries praised the work but told him it would not sell in the UK and advised him to take the paintings to continental Europe, where they would be more favourably received. Tucker even applied for a job as an art lecturer with the London County Council, but then decided he could not stand it. Feeling downcast, rejected and low on funds, he decided to leave for France, complaining in a letter about London with its 'miserable climate, arrogant and mean-spirited people and a daunting and exclusive class system' (cited in Pierce, 2012). In an interview with the artist James Gleeson, he later recalled: 'I sold whatever things I could get my hands on, including Australian winter underwear. I got 19 pounds together and fled for Paris, determined I would see it, even if I starved'. Tucker settled in Paris in 1948 and investigated the formal and technical advancements of Cubism, Art Brut, and Expressionism in his work. Extended periods of travel in Germany and Italy followed, with further artistic discoveries, then a more successful time in London in 1957, where he realised his semi-abstract Thames series of paintings and drawings influenced by Turner. He then spent two years in New York, where he mixed with the beatnik generation and experimented with abstraction. In 1959 the Museum of Modern Art in New York bought Lunar Landscape, the first purchase by a public collection.

Tucker's 1960 show at the Waddington Galleries in London generated considerable interest but he returned to Melbourne in the same year to critical and financial success and with a deeper appreciation of his homeland, its history and inhabitants that often featured in his paintings. He went on to have six solo and sixteen group exhibitions with works entering public collections including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Museum of Modern Art in New York. Tucker died in Melbourne, Australia, in 1999.

Related books

Simon Pierce, Australian Art and Artists in London, 1950–1965: an Antipodean Summer (Burlington, Ashgate, 2012)
Juliette Peers, 1940s Melbourne: Photographs by Albert Tucker (Bulleen: Heide Museum of Modern Art, 2009)
Lesley Harding, Meeting a Dream: Albert Tucker in Paris, 1948–1952 (Bulleen: Heide Museum of Modern Art, 2006)
Gavin Fry, Albert Tucker (Sydney: Beagle Press, 2005)
Janine Burke and Lise Rodgers, Australian Gothic: A Life of Albert Tucker (Sydney: Knopf, 2002)
Jan Minchin and James Mollison, Albert Tucker, a Retrospective (Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 1990)
Jan Mollison, Albert Tucker (South Melbourne: Macmillan Co. of Australia with the co-operation of the Australian National Gallery, 1982)

Public collections

Related organisations

Contemporary Art Society (co-founder)
Victorian Art Society (student)

Selected exhibitions

A Life in Art: Albert Tucker, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne (2017)
Albert Tucker: Promised Gifts from the Estate, New South Wales Art Gallery, Sydney (2007)
The Eye of the Beholder: Albert Tucker's Photographs, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne (1998)
Albert Tucker. Retrospective Exhibition, National Gallery of Victoria (1990)
Angry Penguins: Realist Painting in Melbourne in the 1940s, Tate Liverpool (1988)
Albert Tucker: Recent Paintings, The Waddington Galleries, London (1960)
Albert Tucker. Paintings, Imperial Institute, London
Zwemmer Galleries (1957)
Venice Biennale (1956)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Albert Tucker]