Australia’s oldest working artist Guy Warren dies, aged 103
By Helen Pitt
Australia’s oldest working artist and former Archibald winner Guy Warren has died overnight at the age of 103.
“We are saddened to hear of the passing of Guy Warren this morning,” King Street Gallery, the Sydney gallery that represents him announced on Instagram.
Guy Warren with Peter Wegner’s ‘Guy Warren at 100’, winner of the Archibald Prize 2021.Credit: AGNSW; Felicity Jenkins
“A consummate painter, educator, humanist and lover of life, Guy’s work expressed the beauty and depth of an artist imbued with a visionary aesthetic,” it said.
“He was kind, nurturing, funny and incredibly knowledgeable – with a strong desire to share his love of art and the surrounding world with others.
“Guy will be greatly missed and remembered in the art world. Our thoughts are with his two children, Paul and Joanna, about whom Guy said, ‘they are the best thing I ever made’,” the post said.
The Sydney artist from Greenwich had a studio in Leichhardt, which he drove to daily. He also taught at University of Wollongong.
Guy Warren with his 1985 Archibald Prize-winning painting of his friend, the sculptor Bert Flugelman.Credit: Fairfax Media
He is understood to have been in palliative care this past week.
Warren was the 1985 Archibald winner with a portrait of his friend and fellow artist Bert Flugelman Flugelman with Wingman.
He was also the subject of the 2021 Archibald winning portrait by Melbourne painter Peter Wegner, in the portrait prize’s centenary year.
Born in Goulburn in 1921, the same year the nation’s best-known portrait prize began, he left school in 1935 at the age of 14 , he got a job as an assistant proofreader on The Bulletin.
In his own centenary year, he was celebrated with a succession of events: King Street Gallery on William showed his new work; the National Art School had an overview of his drawings, Gallery Lane Cove hosted a survey show and there were others at the University of Wollongong and the Nicholas Thompson Gallery in Melbourne.
His works have also been exhibited as finalists in the Dobell Prize and he received the Trustees Watercolour Award at the Wynne Prize in 1980.
His father was a piano man at the movies who shifted the family from place to place every couple of years as his contracts expired. Eventually, with the introduction of the talkies and the onset of the Depression, the work dried up. “It seemed like every street corner had an out-of-work muso busking to earn a pittance.”
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