image of person or book cover 8424542661739853141.jpeg
Image courtesy of publisher's website.
y separately published work icon The Making of Donald Friend - Life and Art single work   biography  
Issue Details: First known date: 2023... 2023 The Making of Donald Friend - Life and Art
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Biography of Australian Artist Donald Friend, concentrating on the first 20 years of the artist's life. The book explores the experiences and influences that shaped a significant and controversial figure in Australian Art.

'Ian Britain’s biography brings together rich and revealing detail of Friend’s life and career. There are fresh investigations of the myths, and less glamorous realities, of his ancestral and family background. We are then taken on a journey from his privileged childhood and education in Sydney and rural New South Wales, through his earliest professional training in the city’s art schools, to his first sexual encounters and love affairs. We follow him to Northern Australia, where he engaged with the communities and culture of the Torres Strait Islands, and to the wider world of his student years in the UK and Europe and his spell in West Africa, where he practised as an ethnographer as well as an artist. His years abroad were marked by early career success but also by emotional trauma. On his return to Australia after the outbreak of the Second World War, Friend began to gain wide recognition for his art in his homeland, before enlisting in the army and embarking on his diary. 

'These various narrative strands are deftly set within the framework of turbulent international events and developments: two world wars, a major economic depression, the waning of empire and the burgeoning of modernism in the arts worldwide.' (Publication summary)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Richmond, East Melbourne - Richmond area, Melbourne, Victoria,: Yarra and Hunter Arts Press , 2023 .
      image of person or book cover 8424542661739853141.jpeg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 436p.
      Description: illus.
      Note/s:
      • Publication date : August 2023
      ISBN: 9780646877990

Works about this Work

Friend, beyond the Controversy Christopher Allen , 2024 single work column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 27-28 January 2024; (p. 19)
Friend, beyond the Controversy Christopher Allen , 2024 single work column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 27-28 January 2024; (p. 19)
Last amended 2 Feb 2024 11:18:49
X