Elizabeth Durack Biography
Elizabeth Durack, CMG OBE Hon.D.Lit Murd., born in 1915 has been closely associated with pioneering life in the Australian outback, the Aboriginal people and the modern community in which we live today. Her paintings are a first hand experience of an interesting and unique place that she knew so well. The vastness, the remoteness and the toughness are all portrayed with a poignancy, a freshness and a simplicity, which is essentially Elizabeth Durack. It is through her love of the land and the people of the area that she has made a unique artistic statement. Between 1946 and 1950 Elizabeth held a staggering 11 solo exhibitions and she was one of only three women artists chosen for the 1961 landmark exhibition, "Recent Australian Paintings” at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, in company with Sidney Nolan, Russell Drysdale, Albert Tucker, Fred Williams, Brett Whitely and others. Her paintings hang in Australian State Galleries as well as some of the most prestigious locations in the world, including the Vatican Collection. Elizabeth Durack was enslaved by the mystery of Australia’s desert heartland. Long before she saw the Centre country she was fascinated by its myths and legends: primeval response to an ancient eerie landscape “These paintings move to an Archean rhythm. They live a life of their own – isolated, remote – like the land from which they spring,” said the Wall Street Journal after one exhibition.
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