Noel Counihan

by Bernard Smith

Noel Counihan was a passionate individual. From his late teens his life was a struggle between his commitment to political activity which championed the underprivileged and suppressed, and his art, in which he sought to develop a telling critique of his own society. He succeeded in the latter, some of his paintings - of the working man and woman, the sick, the marginalized, the political protester - becoming Australian icons. This is a finely drawn portrait of a boy growing up in a Melbourne household strained by parental conflict; of a young bohemian caught up in the struggle for civil rights during the great Depression; of a staunch communist active from the 1930s through to the 1980s; of an artist determined to have an art which addressed the social issues of his day accepted; of a husband deeply committed to art and politics; of a dynamic personality given to both deep friendships and bitter aversions. Bernard Smith's telling of this Australian drama, of the minutiae, the tragedy a