Noel Counihan

Noel Jack Counihan (4 October 19135 July 1986) was an Australian social realist painter, printmaker, cartoonist and illustrator active in the 1940s and 1950s in Melbourne. An atheist, communist, and art activist, Counihan made art in response to the politics and social hardships of his times. He is regarded as one of Australia's major artists of the 20th century.

Early life Counihan was born on 4 October 1913 in Albert Park, then a working-class suburb of Melbourne. He attended the St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne Choir school (closed in 1929), then Caulfield Grammar School in 1928.

His 1955 painting On Parliament Steps won the George Crouch Memorial Prize in 1956.

Counihan remained loyal to the Communist Party during its various splits and despite its declining support in the 1970s and 1980s.

His 1973 posthumous portrait of Hugh Gemmell Lamb-Smith – who had taught Counihan at Caulfield Grammar and, as well, had encouraged his artistic endeavours whilst he was there – largely painted from memory, and commissioned by the Caulfield Grammarians' Association, is on permanent display within the school's "Cripps Centre" on its Caulfield Campus.

In 1979, Counihan contributed the entry on footballer Roy Cazaly to volume 7 of the Australian Dictionary of Biography.

Death On 5 July 1986, Counihan died in Canterbury, Melbourne, aged 72.

Selected works The Cough... Stone Dust (1947) A Metal Pourer (1948) Eureka 1854–1954 linocuts (1954) On Parliament Steps (1955) Sunset Dance (1968) Image of Lear lithographs (1977) Face Im (1978) At the Start of the March 1932 (1944)