Louis Kahan’s distinguished career as an artist spanned much of the 20th century. Born in Vienna, Kahan settled in Melbourne in 1947 and soon established a reputation for his painted portraits. By the early 1960s he had become recognised for his expressive portrait drawings, in which the distinctive features and characters of his sitters were captured with energy and economy.
This painting of art critic, writer and producer Robert Hughes AO (1938–2012) as an intense intellectual seems to prefigure the reputation for hauteur and boorishness Hughes subsequently acquired. One of Australia’s famous expatriates of the 1960s, he settled in London in 1964, writing for The Times, The Spectator, The Observer and Oz, and publishing his book The Art of Australia (1966). Appointed art critic for Time magazine, he moved to New York in 1970 and lived in the USA for the rest of his life. Hughes is perhaps best known for his television series The Shock of the New (1980), which introduced modern art to a mass audience.
Gift of the Estate of Louis Kahan 2024. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
© Louis Kahan/Copyright Agency, 2024
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
Sarah Engledow on a foundational gallery figure who was quick on the draw.
Magda Keaney talks with Bill Leak about his bold new portrait of Robert Hughes in the National Portrait Gallery collection.
