Henry Salkauskas

Henry Salkauskas (6 May 1925 – 31 August 1979) was an Australian printmaker and abstract artist in watercolors, a refugee from Lithuania.

History Henrikas Salkauskas was born in Kaunas (aka Kovno), Lithuania, the only child of Henrikas Salkauskas, an army officer, and his wife Ona-Anna Salkauskas, née Sidzikauskas.

He was aged 15 when, in the Soviet occupation Lithuania, his father was among those rounded up and taken away by the Russians, and was never seen again, later found to have died in the Vorkuta concentration camp in Siberia. German occupation followed, then in 1944 when the Russians again took over, Salkauskas and his mother fled to West Germany, settling in Freiburg. Salkauskas studied graphic arts at the University of Freiburg and L'École des Arts et Métiers, and his mother gained medical qualifications. and Henry (his adopted name) worked under contract for two years at a stone quarry near Canberra. He began to exhibit his linocut prints. He often worked in black and shades of grey, a reaction, some say, to the treatment of his father and the harsh climate of his homeland.

He is represented in several State and regional galleries in Australia.

In 1981 the Art Gallery of New South Wales held a retrospective exhibition of his work and, at the instigation of Kubbos, established the Henry Salkauskas Contemporary Art Purchase Fund, endowed by his mother.

He never married.