Arthur McIntyre

Who is Arthur McIntyre?

Arthur McIntyre was an Australian artist and art critic. He was born in Katoomba, New South Wales.

McIntyre's early inspiration as an artist was the popular Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio program Argonauts Club. As member "Atropos 30" McIntyre would send in his drawings to the Argonauts program on a regular basis and the program's art critic Jeffrey Smart would be an ongoing source of encouragement. He was awarded the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Commonwealth Art Award by Jeffrey Smart in 1962 during his final year at Katoomba High School. After earning the Dux of Katoomba High School that same year, McIntyre was offered two university scholarships and chose to study at the Alexander Mackie Teachers College, which was affiliated with Sydney's National Art School. After college, McIntyre taught art in several high schools in Sydney and Canberra before becoming a full-time artist, supplementing his income writing art criticism from 1975. That same year he was awarded a studio at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris.

He was an art critic for The Australian from 1977 to 1978, was the Sydney art critic for The Age throughout the 1980s and a regular contributor to the journal Art & Australia from 1975 to 1990. He published two seminal books: "Resurgence and Redefinition: Australian Contemporary Drawing" and "Contemporary Australian Collage and its Origins".