Frank Hodgkinson AM

1919 - 2001

Frank Hodgkinson was born in Sydney in 1919. As a young man he worked as a lithographer's apprentice, then as a commercial artist and illustrator for Sydney and Melbourne newspapers.

The Second World War saw him in the Western Desert of North Africa with the Australian Imperial Forces, campaigning against the Vichy French in Syria, and then in Papua New Guinea where he was mentioned in dispatches for conspicuous gallantry.

Later, as official war artist, Hodgkinson recorded the landing of allied troops in Borneo.

After the war Hodgkinson continued his art studies at London's Central School of Art, and in Paris at La Grand Chaumiere. From 1947 he lived and worked in Paris, Florence, Rome, Madrid, Majorca, the United States, Papua New Guinea and Australia. Solo exhbitions of his paintings have been staged in London, Madrid, New York, Los Angeles and in Australia. His work has appeared in Salons in the Musee d'Art Moderne, Paris and at London's Tate and Whitechapel Galleries.

From 1971 Hodgkinson became intensely involved with primordial landscapes and the world's last frontiers. He undertook many journeys to the most remote areas of Papua New Guinea and the Kakadu area of Australia's Arnhem Land.

Hodgkinson had the ability to abstract his perceptions of the world and transform them into a dazzling mosaic of visual energy. The author Morris West in his introduction to "Hodgkinson" (Beagle Press 1994) wrote, "Frank Hodgkinson is a prodigy. He is a man so various that he hardly gives you the time to focus on any single one talent. He is a painter, a sculptor, an architect, an author, a designer of habitats and ambiences".

Bibliography

Australian Painters J. Kroeger 1968; Sepik Diary Richard Griffin 1982; Hodgkinson Lou Klepac 1994