News about Sidney Nolan

At an auction of works by top Australian artists, the first sale of a major piece by renowned landscape painter John Olsen since he died in April. The auctioneer characterized the price fetched by Life on the Edge of the Pond as'very pleasing.' Olsen's smaller work, which featured his signature frogs, went under the hammer and was sold for over $50,000, much more than its asking price.

Sidney Nolan is best known for his series of paintings depicting bushranger Ned Kelly in a black suit of armour. However, hundreds of his unveiled works on the Holocaust have never captivated the audience of his most famous images. Nolan was fixated by the atrocities committed in Nazi concentration camps, and he closely followed the 1961 trial of war criminal Adolf Eichmann. The artist had long wanted to react to the Holocaust, but was uncertain that the subject could be turned into art. 'How can a disease be painted?' He asked in his diary. Nolan was given a commission to tell a tale about the death camps, but he didn't get out a bush until he finally visited the crematoria at Auschwitz. The Sydney Jewish Museum has fifty paintings by Nolan before his trip to Poland, which are on display.