Alongside Arthur Boyd, Joy Hester, Sidney Nolan and Albert Tucker, John Perceval dominated the art scene in Melbourne in the 1940s, recognised for his expressive figurative paintings, revealing a sense of alienation and detachment from Australian society - Boy with Cat, 1943 is a key work from this period.
Read MorePerceval was largely self-taught, although he attended art classes with the Commercial Artists Association in Melbourne (1943) and at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (1949). Both he and Boyd were influential figures in Melbourne’s Antipodean group which issued the Antipodean Manifesto (1959), critical of the influence of American abstraction on Australian art, insisting that figurative painting more suitably articulated the values and experiences of the Australian people.
From the late 1940s Perceval experimented with ceramics at Merric Boyd’s studio in Victoria, exhibiting a series at the Museum of Modern Art in 1957. These intimate sculptures expressed both an innocence of childhood and a knowing awareness of the transience of such contentment.
Perceval lived in London (1963-65), returning to Australia as the inaugural recipient of a Creative Arts Fellowship at the ANU, Canberra. His work is held in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
