VALE ROBERT HUNTER 1947 - 2014

 

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Robert Hunter on September 23, 2014. Robert was best known as Australia's most committed minimalist painter. His restrained work came to the attention of the public during The Field exhibition, which opened the NGV St Kilda Road in 1968. Few artists in the history of Australian art have shown such commitment to a singular aesthetic position right from the start, one which has profound phenomenological, existential and philosophical consequences. This position was recognised both in Australia and abroad. In 1971 he represented Australia at the second Indian Triennale and in 1974 he exhibited in Eight Contemporary Artists at MoMA, NY. Over the following years, with the formative support of Bruce Pollard at Pinacotheca, he continued to refine and distill his ideas into ineffable complexity, never veering from the path to which he remained committed, often at a great personal cost. Although he was understood primarily as a minimalist painter, his work equally made contributions to abstraction and conceptual practice in the Australian context and beyond. To those who knew him, Robert was a quiet man with a powerful presence; kind, gentle, humble and dignified. His absence is a great loss to us all, he will be missed dearly. Robert is survivied by his loving partner Janice Louise St Claire Hunter, his brothers John and Kim, his sister Deborah and their extended families.