Frederick Leslie Roy Dalgarno (2 December 1910 – 1 February 2001) was an Australian

social realist Social realism is work produced by painters, printmakers, photographers, writers, filmmakers and some musicians that aims to draw attention to the real socio-political conditions of the working class as a means to critique the power structures ...

artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating the work of art. The most common usage (in both everyday speech and academic discourse) refers to a practitioner in the visual arts o ...

Early life, education and training

Born in Melbourne,

Victoria (Australia) Victoria, commonly abbreviated as Vic, is a States and territories of Australia, state in southeastern Australia. It is the second-smallest state (after Tasmania), with a land area of ; the second-most-populated state (after New South Wales), ...

in 1910, Dalgarno was educated at

Ballarat Ballarat ( ) () is a city in the Central Highlands of Victoria, Australia. At the 2021 census, Ballarat had a population of 111,973, making it the third-largest urban inland city in Australia and the third-largest city in Victoria. Within mo ...

Grammar School. From 1926 to 1930 he attended National Gallery Art School in Melbourne, where he met social realists

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 ...

and Herbert McClintock. He then attended the Academy of Art under

Dattilo Rubbo Antonio Salvatore Dattilo Rubbo (Napoli 21 June 1870 – Sydney 1 June 1955) was an Italian-born artist and art teacher active in Australia from 1897. Rubbo, or Dattilo-Rubbo, was born in Naples in 1870, and spent his early childhood in the N ...

from 1930 to 1932. From 1932 to 1934 he attended East Sydney Technical College Painting & Drawing. Later, between 1951 and 1953 he was at Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, including in 1951–52 William Hayter's

Atelier 17 Atelier 17 was an art school and studio that was influential in the teaching and promotion of printmaking in the 20th century. Originally located in Paris, the studio relocated to New York City during the years surrounding World War II. It moved ...

(etching). In 1980 he studied etching and collography at the Pratt Graphic Centre, New York.

Career

He joined the

Communist Party of Australia The Communist Party of Australia (CPA), known as the Australian Communist Party (ACP) from 1944 to 1951, was an Australian communist party founded in 1920. The party existed until roughly 1991, with its membership and influence having been ...

in the 1930s but, according to art historian Bernard Smith, his

bohemian Bohemian or Bohemians may refer to: *Anything of or relating to Bohemia Culture and arts * Bohemianism, an unconventional lifestyle, originally practised by 19th–20th century European and American artists and writers. * Bohemian style, a ...

temperament was incompatible with party puritanism. He left the party in 1949. In the late 1930s he travelled to the canefields of North

Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...

, where he concentrated on his painting. He co-founded the Studio of Realist Art (SORA) Sydney in 1945. From 1947 to 1949 he worked as lecturer at the East Sydney Technical College. After studying in Paris, he moved to India, where he co-founded ''Editions Anarkali'', publisher of fine arts in Bombay, while being employed as a visiting lecturer in lithography at the School of Fine Arts. In 1953 he won the First Prize for Diploma Students, lithography, at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris. In 1965 he won first prize at the Mahasartra State (India) exhibition. In 1975 he moved to Auckland, New Zealand, where he worked as a lecturer in drawing and composition at the Auckland Society of Arts.

Death

Dalgarno died in Auckland of pneumonia in 2001.

Legacy

Described as a

socialist Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...

bohemian and a social realist painter, his work commissioned by the Australian maritime and mining trade unions is perhaps the best remembered, for its depiction of Australian workers and working conditions. The art historian Bernard Smith wrote of Dalgarno: "He belongs to that great generation of social realist Australian artists who flourished during World War II and early post-war years but – in the aftermath of the Cold War – are now largely stored and forgotten by curators." ('Artist of the Everyday' ''The Australian'', 23 February 2001)

References

External links

Roy Dalgarno — Tribute to an Artist
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dalgarno, Roy 1910 births 2001 deaths Artists from Melbourne Social realist artists 20th-century Australian painters 20th-century Australian male artists Australian male painters People educated at Ballarat Grammar School National Gallery of Victoria Art School alumni