James Gleeson

Artist's Biography

James Gleeson was born on 21 November 1915 in Hornsby, New South Wales. He studied art at East Sydney Technical Collect and also teaching at the Sydney Teachers College.

However, he is best known as Australia’s first surrealist artist and could be called “the father of Australian surrealism” because he is remembered foremost for his series of monumental and apocalyptic organic surrealist paintings. Gleeson continued throughout his life to work in the surrealist style, exhibiting his art for 70 years. He has said of his work: “I’ve never accepted the external appearance of things as the whole truth. The world is much more elaborate than the nerves of our eyes can tell us.” James Gleeson’s paintings over the course of some fifty productive years developed a heroic quality with imagery ranging from the violent and disturbing to the lyrical and almost ethereal. He continued to create works of art well into old age, incorporating notions of classical mythology while remaining true to his surrealist roots.

In addition to being a well-known painter, Gleeson was also a respected art critic, lecturer, curator and author.

His first exhibit was part of a student exhibition at the Sydney Teachers College where he displayed his ‘City on a tongue’ in 1938, and he has exhibited regularly since. As a young man Gleeson also enjoyed writing, especially poetry.

He taught art at Kogarah Girls High School from 1941-1944, and then lectured art at Sydney Teachers College until 1946.

From 1947 to 1949 Gleeson travelled throughout Europe and studied the work of the ‘old masters’, and the new ‘surrealists’, including Salvador Dalí, Rene Magritte and Max Ernst (who were to heavily influence in his early painting career), in addition to the ideas of psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.

In his role as an author, Gleeson worked as an art critic and writer for newspapers and art magazines, in addition to producing several major texts on Australian art, including in 1964 a work on the Australian sculptor and painter William Dobell, which established him as a serious art historian. He has also produced a book of his own poems.

James Gleeson also served in a number of capacities for bodies including: the Teachers Federation Art Society (Sydney); Contemporary Art Society; the Sir William Dobell Art Foundation; Commonwealth Art Advisory Board; International Art Critics Association & the National Gallery of Australia.

In 1993, due to the National Gallery of Australia’s exhibition of works from around the world, Surrealism: Revolution by Night, interest in surrealism in Australia increased enormously (something that Gleeson had been working towards in his writings for years), with a consequent focus of interest in his work.

He was awarded membership of the Order of Australia (AM) for services to art in 1975. He also holds honorary degrees from Macquarie University, Sydney (1989) and the University of New South Wales (2001). In 1990 Gleeson was made an  Officer of the Order of Australia (AO).

The National Gallery of Victoria mounted a major retrospective exhibition of Gleeson’s work in 2004, titled “Beyond the Screen of Sight”.

Some works by Gleeson were donated to the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra in September 2007 as part of one of the largest collections of Australian surrealist art ever collected. Other paintings by Gleeson are also held in the collections of the Art Gallery of NSW, the National Gallery of Victoria as well as many Australian commercial art galleries and private collections.

James Gleeson died in Sydney in 2008 at the age of 92.

Studies:

East Sydney Technical College in 1936; travel studies in Europe and the United Kingdom from 1947 to 1949 and Europe from 1958 to 1959.

Exhibitions:

First Contemporary Art Society exhibition in Melbourne in 1938 with a Dali-inspired painting. He held over 35 solo exhibitions from 1950 to 1992, first mainly at Macquarie then Watters, Sydney; Pinacotheca, Melbourne. Numerous group exhibitions including Contemporary Art Society exhibitions, Sydney from 1939 to 1946; 110 Years of Australian Art, Blaxland Gallery in 1950; 33 Male Artists, Heide Park and Art Gallery in 1986; Drawing in Australia from 1770’s to 1980’s, National Gallery of Australia in 1988; The New Romantics, Penrith Regional Gallery and touring Regional Galleries in Victoria, NSW and Queensland in 1988; The Great Australian Art Exhibition 1788 – 1988; Modern Muses: Classical Mythology in Australian Art, S. H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney in 1989; Contemporary Australian Drawing, Museum of Contemporary Art, Brisbane in 1992; Clemenger Triennial, National Gallery of Victoria in 1992.

Publications:

Gleeson has written a number of books on art including William Dobell, Thames & Hudson, London, 1964; Masterpieces of Australian Painting, Lansdowne, Melbourne, 1969; Colonial Painters 1788 – 1880, Lansdowne Press, 1971; Impressionist Painters 1881 – 1930, Lansdowne Press 1971; Ray Crooke, Collins, Sydney, 1972; Robert Klippel, Bay Books, 1983.

Awards:

Contemporary Art Society prize (shared with Eric Thake), 1941; AM (Member of the Order of Australia), 1975; Honorary Doctor of Letters, Macquarie University, 1989; Officer Order of Australia 1990.

Appointments:

Lecturer in Art at Sydney Teachers College from 1945 to 1946; Lecturer, Orient Line exhibitions of Australian painting, 1956, 1964 and 1967; Art Critic of the Sydney Sun from 1949 to 1972 and the Sun-Herald from 1962 to 1972; Director of the Sir William Dobell Art Foundation in  1971; Member of the judging panel of the eleventh Bienale de São Paulo in Brazil in 1971, (Australian Commissioner in 1972); Member of the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board in  1972; Deputy Chairman of the Visual Arts/Crafts Board of the Australia Council from 1973 to 1976; Council Member of the National Gallery of Australia from 1976 to 1982, Chairman of the acquisitions committee in 1973, Visiting Curator in 1975.

Represented:

National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery South Australia, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Museum and Art Galleries of Northern Territory, National Gallery of Victoria, Queensland Art Gallery, Queen Victoria Art Gallery and Museum, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, most regional galleries and other public collections.

Bibliography:

Catalogue essays exhibitions as above. All major texts on Australian art including Smith, AP 5/3/1967. Renée Free, James Gleeson: Images from the Shadows. Craftsman House, 1993, The Encyclopedia of Australian Art, Alan & Susan McCulloch.