Elwyn Lynn occupied a remarkable position in Australian art of the second half of the 20thC.
In 1958, Lynn visited Europe, where the walls and buildings of many major cities still bore the scars
of the dreadful destruction of the Second World War. He also attended the Venice Biennale,
where he saw the works of the emerging matter painters, including Antoni Tapies, who were being
exhibited in the Spanish Pavilion. These experiences exerted an indelible influence on Lynn. He felt
that it was impossible, now, to create paintings that calmly tinkered with formal arrangements, or
which confined themselves to beguiling but innocuous subject matter. Lynn turned to unconventional
painting media and above all to expressive surfaces to construct metaphors for human suffering and
endurance. Most of his work was essentially abstract, although a sense of the landscape is often
evoked a landscape disfigured, torn and corrugated by time and geomorphic stresses.
The later work of Lynn maintained his interest in damaged and shredding surfaces, and his frequent and
adventurousness use of assemblage elements. These late works were also marked by an expressionist
vehemence and a daring informality.
As well as his considerable achievements as a painter, Elwyn Lynn was also of central importance in
Australian art as a writer, and art critic, President of the Contemporary Art Society (NSW Branch), Chair
of the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council and for fourteen years, and Curator of the Power Gallery
of Contemporary Art at the University of Sydney. His awards include the Wynne Prize for landscape painting
in 1988, an Australia Council Emeritus Award in 1994, and a Membership of the Order of Australia in 1975.
In 1991, the Art Gallery of New South Wales mounted a comprehensive Retrospective Exhibition of his
work. "Elwyn Lynn: Metaphor and Texture", a major study of his work, was published by Craftsman House
in 2002.
Emeritus Professor Peter Pinson
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Wagga Crow 1985
Le Pont St Michel 1992
Pont Cezanne 1992
Square with Scribble 1996
Seine et Danibe 1994
Untitled (Hautcreme) 1978
Black Rainbow & Black Paddock 1985