Bathers
1962
Oil on hardboard, 121 x 90cm (Detail)
Awarded the Transfield Art Prize, 1962
Andrew Sibley was born in 1933 in England and came to Queensland with his family when he was aged fourteen.
He studied at the National Art School, Sydney between 1950 and 1952. In 1952 he travelled to England and studied at St. Martin’s School of Art and at the Slade.
Returning to Australia in 1957 he settled in Brisbane where his painting attracted attention. His work was included in the 1961 exhibition of Australian art shown at the Whitechapel Gallery, London.
Sibley’s art, like that of John Molvig with whom Sibley was closely associated, is vigorous and figurative. Although he has painted landscapes, for example Memories of Mount Garnet, 1961 in the Newcastle Region Art Gallery Collection, his real preoccupation has been with human nature, and much of his figure painting has a parodic quality.
His fluid handling of the figure, where the parts seem to float against each other, is typified in Bathers 1962.
