ROBERT JUNIPER

Juniper was born in Merredin, Western Australia and studied at the Beckenham School of Art, Kent in England (1943-46). He returned to Australia in 1949, teaching and working as a painter, sculptor and printmaker. Although influenced by artists such as Paul Klee and Sam Fullbrook, Juniper’s response to the Australian landscape embodies an intuitive and personal appreciation of its remoteness, with the artist adopting or evoking a high point of view and an abstracted calligraphy and mark making suggestive of early Aboriginal art.

Juniper won the Wynne Prize for landscape painting in 1980 and has exhibited in Australia, Great Britain, Japan and the United States. In 1998, he was presented a State Living Treasure Award by the Ministry for Culture and the Arts in Western Australia. A retrospective of his work was held by the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1980. His work is held in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.