Mobirise bootstrap layout builder

Ceylon

34 x 25 cm
Charcoal on paper
Signed and dated, 1951.

Grahame Edwin King

Grahame Edwin King (1915-2008) was a master Australian artist, who has been called the 'patron saint of contemporary Australian printmaking'. Born in Melbourne, King started work at the age of fifteen while attending night school at the Working Men’s College of Melbourne to study commercial art. In 1939 King won a scholarship to the art school of the National Gallery of Victoria.

Having served in the Army during WWII, in 1947 King travelled to England where he studied drawing and printmaking at the Abbey Arts Centre in Hertfordshire and the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. While studying at The Abbey, King met his future wife, German sculptor Inge Neufeld, whom he married in 1950. The couple returned to Australia in 1951 and held many exhibitions in Melbourne.

King was responsible for the revival of print making in Australia in the 1960s. He helped set up the Print Council of Australia, of which he was the first Honorary Secretary and was later President. He taught printmaking at The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology from 1966 to 1988. He was awarded the Order of Australia for his services to art education in 1991. King visited Ceylon on his way back to Australia in 1951.