Architecture, Art and Photography
Book Details

Voyage and Landfall

The Art of Jan Senbergs

Patrick McCaughey

Ten-year-old Jan Senbergs landed with his family in Melbourne in 1950, driven by tragic and violent events in the closing months of World War II from his native Latvia.

Opinion

“[McCaughey] presents Senbergs as a rare, original and bold voice in Australian art.”
(Christopher Bantick, The Mercury Magazine, 11/3/05)

“Never mind using the Melway, just follow Melbourne artist Jan Senbergs.”
(Alison Barclay, The Herald Sun, 17/4/05)

About this Title

Ten-year-old Jan Senbergs landed with his family in Melbourne in 1950, driven by tragic and violent events in the closing months of World War II from his native Latvia. His story is a remarkable voyage—from a refugee arriving at Port Melbourne, unable to speak English, to a major Australian painter with a powerful and searching vision of his country.

Voyage and Landfall is the first monograph on Jan Senbergs. Luminously illustrated with more than two hundred paintings and drawings, it uncovers an underlying pattern in Senbergs' life and art between the search for experience—the voyages—and its rendering in the studio—the landfalls.

Largely self-taught, Senbergs has formulated an expressive style that is highly idiosyncratic and capable of great social and political comment. His subjects range from the dramatic landscapes and cityscapes of Port Melbourne, the mines of Mt Lyell in Tasmania, the Antarctic, to maverick outsider figures in history, such as William Buckley, Wilbraham Liardet and Carsten Borchgrevink. His distorted, map-like views of Melbourne and Sydney are resonant and original images of Australia.

Senbergs' art has received much-deserved recognition at home and overseas, and his work is held in all major galleries around Australia. His impressive artistic career has garnered numerous awards, fellowships and commissions, from the huge mural in the High Court of Australia in the 1970s to the prestigious posting as the Visiting Professor of Australian Studies at Harvard University in the late 1980s. Senbergs is the only Australian artist to receive this honour.

In Voyage and Landfall renowned critic and art historian Patrick McCaughey traces Senbergs' journey, his development as an artist and his distinctive interpretation of the Australian landscape. This warm and insightful chronicle of Senbergs' life provides a richly illustrated, comprehensive overview of his work, his sources of inspiration and his significant contribution to Australian art.

About the Author

Patrick McCaughey was born in Ireland in 1943 and came to Australia at the age of ten. He studied Fine Arts and English at the University of Melbourne and became art critic of The Age in 1966. After a period in New York on a Harkness Fellowship, he was appointed Professor of Visual Arts at Monash University in 1972 and went on to become Director of the National Gallery of Victoria in 1981. He left Australia in 1988 and was successively director of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, and the Yale Center for British Art. In 2003 he published his Australian memoir, The Bright Shapes and the True Names. He lives and works in New Haven, Connecticut.

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978-0-522-85182-3