Elwyn (Jack) Lynn was an Australian self-taught artist, author, art critic and curator. He trained as a teacher, and was a schoolmaster in Sydney Secondary schools until 1968. Lynn was self-taught as an artist.
Lynn was Curator of the Power Gallery of Contemporary Art at Sydney University from 1969 to 1983. There he built up an international collection, which is now within the Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art.
Lynn was an art critic at The Australian for many years and was author of several books, including one about the artist Sir Sidney Nolan.
Alongside his career as a painter, which started in the mid-1940s, Lynn was also an outspoken commentator on the visual arts. In the 1950s and 1960s he edited the Broadsheets of the Contemporary Art Society. He worked as a critic for a number of newspapers, including the Sunday Mirror (1963), The Bulletin (1966-1973), Nation (1969), The Australian (1964-1965) and The Weekend Australian. In 1971 he became Advisory Editor of Art International. He also edited Art and Australia for a short period.
Lynn was awarded Membership of the Order of Australia in 1975. He won the Wynne Prize at the Art Gallery of NSW in 1988. In 1989, he received an Honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Sydney. In 1994 he received the Emeritus Award from the Australia Council.
Lynn won numerous prizes and his work is held in all major Australian Galleries including the Australian War Memorial and numerous large private collections.
Elwyn Lynn’s work was striking, with the use of unconventional painting media and expressive surfaces to construct metaphors for human suffering and endurance. Most of his work was essentially abstract, although a sense of the landscape is often evoked.
Emeritus Professor Peter Pinson noted:
The later work of Lynn maintained his interest in damaged and shredding surfaces, and his frequent and adventurousness use of assemblage elements. These late works were also marked by an expressionist vehemence and a daring informality.
Reference: Biographical Notes courtesy Wikipedia
