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Aus Art Editions
PO Box 2482,
Fitzroy BC,
Victoria 3065
Phone: 61 3 9347 1022
Fax: 61 3 9347 2330
ausart@ausart.com.au
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The Authors
Alan McCulloch
The founding author of McCulloch’s Encyclopedia of Australian Art, Alan McCulloch (1907–1992) was one of Australia's foremost art critics for more than 60 years, most notably as The Herald art critic, Melbourne, 1952–1982.
Born in Melbourne and brought up in Sydney, returning to Melbourne as a teenager, for 18 years he worked in banking but with Renaissance flair and energy he devoted his nights to the study of art in the city’s art schools until eventually able to devote himself full time to the art interests which absorbed his life. In 1946 he moved to America where, in 1948 he married Ella Bromley Moscovitz (1908–1991) an Australian-born actress, businesswoman and US citizen to whom he was married until her death in 1991. The couple lived in New York, Paris, Positano and London 1946–1950 before returning to Australia where Alan was appointed The Herald art critic, and with their daughter Susan, they moved to Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula. He held several solo exhibitions in London and Melbourne and illustrated a number of his own books (including Trial by Tandem, 1951; Highway Forty, 1952).
He wrote widely for Australian and international journals; initiated and curated Aboriginal Bark Paintings from the Chaseling and Cahill collections from the Museum of Victoria for show at the Houston Fine Art Gallery, Texas, 1965 and the large touring survey exhibition, The Heroic Years of Australian Art 1977–78. He was founding director of the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery and established for that gallery its inaugural collection of unique works on paper. His other significant art books including The Golden Age of Australian Art; The Heidelberg School and Artists of the Australian Gold Rush.
McCulloch’s Encyclopedia of Australian Art started as a scrapbook of cuttings kept by Alan since the 1940s, and was first published as one volume in 1968. He was its sole author for several updates and reprints and a completely new edition in 1984, joined by his daughter Susan in 1990, who continued publication for its 1994 edition.
Alan McCulloch received an Order of Australia; an honorary doctorate from Melbourne University and an Emeritus Medal, Australia Council. Described in obituaries as `one of the most influential art critics of modern art’ he was actively involved in art until his death. His last writing was the small `Homage to art’ which appears at the front of this book, written just two weeks before he died in 1992.
`Like his art, his writing has the same qualities as his personality, sometimes an air of polished wit, sometimes the withdrawn depths of the dreamer, always the pure glow of sincerity.’ (Encyclopedia of Australian Art, first edition, 1968)
Susan McCulloch |
Emily McCulloch Childs |
Alan McCulloch |
The Team
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