Charles Blackman was born in Sydney, Australia in 1928. Predominantly self-taught, he studied at East Sydney Technical College in 1943–46 and on receiving a Helena Rubenstein Travelling Scholarship, he moved to London in 1961, where he participated in the ground-breaking show 'Recent Australian Painting' at the Whitechapel Gallery and had a solo exhibition at the prestigious Matthiesen Gallery. A figurative painter at a time when abstraction was increasingly fashionable, during his six years in London he produced a major body of paintings, evoking dreams, memories, and a sense of longing and loneliness.
Painter Charles Blackman was born in Sydney, Australia on 12 August 1928. Largely a self-taught artist, he attended night classes at East Sydney Technical College in 1943–46. He held his first solo exhibition in 1953, in the living room of fellow artists Mirka and Georges Mora, securing the support of the influential art patrons John and Sunday Reed. Between 1952 and 1955 he created his first major series, Schoolgirls followed by Alice in Wonderland, which became become Australian classics. These paintings featured girls in school uniform, often depicted in unsettling streetscapes, as a symbolic embodiment of urban loneliness, alienation and vulnerability, their superficial charm and colour concealing a dark subtext. Encouraged by prominent art critic Bernard Smith, Blackman joined with fellow artists to assert the strength of the figurative image against the trend towards abstraction in the historically important Antipodeans Exhibition, held at the Victorian Artists’ Society in Melbourne in 1959.
Blackman`s paintings attracted the interest of Sir Kenneth Clark, then a London buyer for the National Gallery of South Australia, who suggested he exhibit in London. Thanks to the Helena Rubenstein Travelling Scholarship, Blackman and his wife set sail for England in January 1961. Upon their arrival, fellow Australian artist Arthur Boyd took Blackman to see the Vermeer painting The Guitar Player at Kenwood, a short walk from his home in Hampstead Lane in north west London. After a short period living with Boyd, the Blackmans found accommodation in nearby Jacksons Lane. The London that Blackman encountered felt very different from the mood of postwar austerity that earlier expatriate Australian artists had experienced in the late 1940s. He later recalled that Britain was recovering from the war and had begun to look outwards: `The English were coming out of their chrysalis with their own painters and getting recognition for them and also introducing into England via the Tate Art Gallery American abstract expressionism. Big shows were being mounted which had never been mounted before’ (Pierse 2012, p. 185). In 1961, Blackman exhibited with other Australian artists at Bryan Robertson's ground-breaking show Recent Australian Painting at the Whitechapel Gallery. John Douglas Pringle noted in the Observer: ‘[…] the most moving – and the discovery of the exhibition – are the three remarkable paintings by Charles Blackman of a blind girl, in which the fact of blindness is explored with the greatest tenderness and compassion […] the striking colour combinations suggest sensations that cannot be seen’ (Pringle 1961, p. 28). In the same year he also held a solo exhibition at the prestigious Matthiesen Gallery in Bond Street, established by German émigré art dealer, Francis Matthiesen. Robertson, director of the Whitechapel Gallery, wrote in the Preface to the catalogue: 'These are some of the strongest, most urgent and forceful paintings that I have seen in the past ten years. Part of their essential character springs from the interaction, marvellously developed and sustained, between the tenderness and grace of the personages contained in the paintings and the fiercely, implacably controlled means taken to give these personages life and eloquence within the terms of painting itself` (Bonhams website).
Sir Kenneth Clark also took particular interest in Blackman’s work and became friendly with him. As their friendship grew, Clark even invited the Blackmans to move to a cottage on his Saltwood estate in Kent, but Blackman preferred to remain in London. While living in Highgate, Blackman became close friends with fellow Australian expats, Arthur Boyd and Barry Humphries, and later, when he moved to Hanover Gate Mansions (near Regent's Park), with Colin Lanceley and Robert Hughes. His friends among British painters included Adrian Heath, Prunella Clough and Keith Vaughan, as well as Al Alvarez, Tom Rosenthal, among English literary figures. At the peak of his success, Blackman was scheduled to hold a solo show at the Whitechapel Gallery, but due to unforeseen circumstances (purportedly a protest from David Hockney at the lack of support for London artists), it was cancelled at the last moment. Nevertheless, during his six years in London Blackman produced a major body of paintings, evoking dreams, memories, and a sense of longing and loneliness, such as the celebrated The Meeting (1961, private collection), and his work was often singled out in the press for critical acclaim.
Blackman returned to Australia in 1966. He designed sets for the Western Australian Ballet Company and Sydney Dance Company, and, with wife, he bought Chiron College in Birchgrove, Sydney, to offer an alternative kind of schooling for artists. In 1970 he was awarded a Cité des Artes scholarship and spent a year in Paris. In 1977, he was awarded an OBE for services to art and culture. Charles Blackman died in Sydney, Australia on 20 August 2018. His work is represented in UK public collections including the British Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum and Swindon Museum and Art Gallery. In 2011 his work featured in the group show at the British Museum, Out of Australia: Prints and Drawings from Sidney Nolan to Rover Thomas.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Charles Blackman]
Publications related to [Charles Blackman] in the Ben Uri Library