Ivor Hele, (1912-93), Australian artist. Longest serving war artist for the Australian War Memorial. Completed more commissioned works than any other Australian artist in the history of Australian art. War artists capture the experience of war in an artistic manner whilst based in the battlefield. ... ANZAC Day Dawn Service at AWM, 25 April 2005, 90th anniversary The War Memorial is set amongst parkland The Australian War Memorial is Australias national memorial to the members of all its armed forces and supporting organizations who have died in the wars of the modern state of Australia. ... Australia is home to perhaps the oldest continuous artistic traditions in the world _ that is, those of the Aboriginal Australians, an artistic tradition that began to receive international recognition in the late 20th century. ...
First war artist appointed in the Second World War, he served in New Guinea and North Africa. He was also a war artist in the Korean War. Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km into the air. ...
He won Australia's most prestigious portrait prize, the Archibald Prize five times, for these works in the following years: The Archibald Prize is regarded as the most important portraiture prize, and is the most prominent of all arts prizes, in Australia. ...
1951 - Laurie Thomas
1953 - Sir Henry Simpson Newland, CBE, DSO, MS, FRCS
Hele’s solid academic training in life drawing, figure studies and portraiture, acquired as a student in Paris and Munich, prepared him for the rigours of recording life on the front line during war.
Hele enlisted in the Army to assist his appointment as an official war artist and was seconded from the AIF while serving in the Middle East in 1941.
Hele’s drawings, which were frequently completed on the spot, are vigorous and powerful, showing both the physical endurance of the men and their quieter, more reflective moments.
Hele then traveled to the South Pacific island of New Guinea where he drew and painted the fierce combat between the Australians and the Japanese in dark and difficult jungle terrain.
At the height of the Korean War, Hele spent five months in the mud and the cold of Korea, brilliantly recording the struggles of the Australian soldiers in their trenches.
The most striking thing about IvorHele was that, after traveling the globe and devoting his life to recording every form of savagery that humans can wreak upon each other, he finally reached his saturation level of death and despair and retreated to an isolated cottage on a remote Australian beach.
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