'Walking in a Dream I' by Louis Kahan
Louis Kahan (1905-2002), Australian artist born in
Vienna who won the Archibald Prize in 1962 with a portrait of Patrick
White. Given the Order of Australia in 1993. He has never received any
formal art training.
He travelled from Vienna to Paris when he was 20. He enlisted in the
French Foreign Legion in 1939 and was sent to North Africa as a war
artist. He had an exhibition at Oran in 1942. He was a voluntary artist
for the Red Cross between 1943 and 1945. During this time photography
was not permitted of soldiers, so his paintings were some of the only
record at the time and were sometimes sent back to families for
reassurance. He returned to Paris after the war, and then travelled
across the United States before he arrived in Perth.
He moved to Melbourne in 1950. He made many portraits of Australian and
other celebrities, including Geoffrey Blainey, Judy Cassab, Manning
Clark, Arthur Boyd, Dame Joan Sutherland, Yehudi Menuhin, Luciano
Pavarotti.
Excerpt
from “Wikipedia”, August 2010