John Brack
1920–1999 · Australian painter of the postwar period
John Brack (1920-1999) was an Australian painter and a member of the Antipodeans group. His early works captured the character of postwar Australian society with unusual precision, and his paintings remain a key reference for understanding the country in the second half of the twentieth century.
Born in the Melbourne suburb of South Melbourne, he worked as a clerk at an insurance company while attending night classes at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School. During the Second World War he served with the field artillery. In the 1950s he gained attention with satirical canvases such as Collins St., 5 pm (1955), which shows rush hour in postwar Melbourne with almost identical figures, and The Bar (1954), modelled on Manet's A Bar at the Folies-Bergere and aimed at the six o'clock swill, the custom created by the early closing of Australian pubs.
His style moved toward simplified forms and deliberately drab colours, often dominated by browns. In the 1970s he produced a long series of highly stylised works featuring pencils and other objects. He taught art at Melbourne Grammar School and later headed the National Gallery of Victoria Art School. His legacy lies in having fixed the iconography of an era on canvas.