Geoffrey Graham (1911-1986) was a Sydney-based surrealist artist. Work by Graham was included in the Realism and Surrealism exhibition in Gloucester, UK in 1938. His work Bellita, exhibited in the Sydney Contemporary Art Society's exhibition of 1940, was described by James Gleeson in his seminal article "What is Surrealism?": 'A fantastically gay group of beings circles interminably in a desert, beneath a black sky from which all hope has long since departed . . . The staccato thrust of forms . . . might well be the wind-broken limbs and antennae of some monstrous dead crustacean. It is a picture of the determined human gala defeated by the usages of monotony and despair.' Interest in Graham's drawings and etchings of bodies in 'psychological and physical torment' was revived by the National Gallery of Australia exhibition Surrealism: Revolution by Night in 1993. The National Gallery holds more than seventy of the artist's works.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Rex Dupain 2003
Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program
Rex Dupain (15 portraits)
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
Johanna McMahon revels in history and mystery in pursuit of a suite of unknown portrait subjects.
Christopher Chapman takes a trip through the doors of perception, arriving at the junction of surrealism and psychoanalysis.
