Sidney Nolan: An Introduction
Sir Sidney Nolan OM AC CBE RA is an artist who has always inspired strong feelings among his admirers and detractors. In this lecture Jaynie Anderson AM OSI FAHA will challenge the conventional cliches of the biographies written about Nolan to date with reference to previously unknown archival evidence. Nolan’s relations to Jewish survivors of the Holocaust will be discussed. New documentary evidence about his admiration for Leonhard Adam and Yosl Bergner will be revealed from the time he lived in St Kilda as a child, and in Parkville in the 1940s. Adam and Bergner inspired Nolan to create works of art about Indigenous subjects which remained a lifelong preoccupation for him. The early Jewish legacy to Nolan was of continual significance and resurfaces in his preoccupation with Auschwitz.
The exhibition will be open to the public for viewing prior to the event.
