Noel Counihan, born in Melbourne, began his career as a press caricaturist, freelancing in Australia, New Zealand and Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. In between four- and six-year stints as a staff artist for the Melbourne Guardian, in the early 1950s he worked for the World Trade Union Movement in London. In Melbourne, throughout the 1950s and 1960s he exhibited pictures of miners, construction workers, demonstrations and other scenes of working-class life. Between 1951 and 1960 his work was shown in London, Warsaw, Copenhagen, Moscow and Leningrad; during this period he won the Crouch Prize twice, the McCaughey Prize and the VS drawing prize as well as a bronze medal at the International Graphics exhibition in Leipzig. In 1969 he exhibited in Poland and the USSR. The NGV held a survey of his work in 1973, in which year he also had a survey show at the Commonwealth Gallery in London; in 1974 he had a residency at the Cité in Paris. In 1982 he lived in France, and produced a body of work depicting French village life.
