Alun Leach-Jones was a British-born Australian artist known for his range of work covering painting, drawing, sculpture, linocuts, screenprints and etchings.
Born in Maghull Lancashire in the UK, his family moved to the village of Glasfryn in North Wales where he spent his childhood.
In 1951, aged 14, he began a three-year apprenticeship with the Solicitors Law Stationery Society Limited in Liverpool, where he was employed as a painter of illuminated manuscripts. He studied art at the Liverpool College of Art from 1955 to 1957 before moving to Adelaide Australia in 1960, where he studied printmaking at the South Australian School of Art under Udo Sellbach.
During 1964–65, Leach-Jones moved back to London, where he produced screenprints influenced by the British pop art of fellow artists Patrick Caulfield and Eduard Paolozzi returning to Australia in 1966 and settling in Melbourne.
In the 1960’s, Leach-Jones was recognized as part of what was then called the New Abstraction in Australian art. His work developed into a style still known as hard-edge painting. He was included in the now notorious 1968 The Field exhibition held at the National Gallery of Victoria.
In 1971 Leach-Jones received a Master Diploma from the National Gallery of Victoria Art School
In 1978, he painted a permanent mural called Sydney Summer for Macquarie University in Sydney and in 1979 another mural for the Griffith University in Brisbane called Crossing to Capricorn.
Leach-Jones was awarded the Fremantle Print Award in 1985 and an Honorary Life Fellow of the Royal Society of Panter-Printmakers London in 1999. He exhibited regularly throughout Australia and was represented in New York by the Luise Ross Gallery. His works are held in many prominent private and public collections around the world including the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art New York, the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York, the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford to name a few.
Reference: Courtesy Wikipedia
