Celebrated Aussie artist Guy Warren dead at 103

15 June 2024 06:20 am Views - 62

Former Archibald winner and Australia's oldest working artist Guy Warren has died.

King Street Gallery on William in Sydney, which represents him, announced the 103-year-old's death on Friday.

Mr Warren died at 5am on Friday, June 14, following a short period in palliative care.

'Our thoughts are with his two children, Paul and Joanna, about whom Guy said, 'they are the best thing I ever made',' gallery directors Robert and Randi Linnegar said in a statement.

They said Mr Warren would be dearly missed and described him as a 'a wonderful, kind-hearted, incredibly intelligent, funny and thoughtful person and artist', who was 'dedicated to the education, expression and encouragement of the visual arts'.

Mr Warren was a dedicated painter for the past 80 years and mentored hundreds of young artists during his career.

'He mentored hundreds of young artists over the course of his long and significant artistic career,' the pair said.

'The world will be the lesser for having lost this trailblazing 103-year-old painter, teacher, philosopher, holder of history and story-teller.'

Mr Warren was born in Goulburn, NSW, in 1921, completing some time in the army deployed to Papua New Guinea as a teenager.

He returned to Australia to study art where he spent the next 80 years painting and had more than 50 solo exhibitions around the globe since 1955.

His work varied in genre throughout his career, with his portrait of Bert Flugelman, The Wingman, winning him the Archibald Prize in 1985.

Mr Warren also won the Art Gallery of New South Wales Trustees' Watercolour Award in 1979, and the Bronze Medal at the 4th International Triennial of Drawing in Poland in 1988.

He received the Medal of the Order of Australia for his services to the arts in 1999, and the Australia Medal in 2013.

The artist also received two honorary Doctorates of Visual Arts from the University of Wollongong and the University of Sydney in 2007 and 2008.

His work features in collections in every state gallery in Australia, as well as the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, the British Museum, the National Library in Beijing, and the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. (MCA News Wire)