Donald Friend (1915 - 1989)

An extraordinary draughtsman, diarist, printmaker and painter, Donald Friend was known for his intelligence, remarkable inventiveness and pungent wit; qualities which infuse every canvas and sheet he laid his mark upon. Friend was trained in Sydney and London, however, his proclivity for travel and the search for the exceptional and the exotic, led him to destinations as far flung as Africa, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. His vision was informed by his admiration for the satire and fantasy of artists such as S.T. Gill, Bosch and Breughel, and his acute observations of life during his years as a war artist bear comparison with the masterful drawings of Goya and Henry Moore. Friend’s skilled portrayal of the human form, in particular the male figure, through the breathtaking quantity of drawings, watercolours, prints, and paintings owes as much to the inspiration fuelled by the study of Michelangelo and Hogarth, as his ability to delineate forms in an almost calligraphic line, mixed with a sensitivity for colour and design. Admired by his contemporaries, including Russell Drysdale, for his outstanding flair as a colourist, his decorative sensibilities resulted from his response to the richly coloured compositions of Matisse and lavish brilliance of Byzantine art. More recently, Friend’s talent for illustration and articulate writing may be evidenced through the publication of the artist’s diaries by the National Library of Australia.