Louis KAHAN

Austrian 1905–2002
lived in France 1925–39, Algeria 1939–47, worked in Australia 1947–2002

To me a face is not just a face. It’s a landscape and if you can interpret the features it says a host of things about itself and what lies behind it. Portrait painting at its best, using analysis and imagination, is possibly the most difficult branch of art, because each of us has a mask … Trying to penetrate to the reality behind the mask is the interesting thing.1

Throughout his long career as an artist, Louis Kahan painted and drew innumerable portraits. As a member of the French Foreign Legion during World War II he drew his fellow soldiers, carefully describing their appearance in images which were then copied and often sent home to anxious relatives. Living in Melbourne during the 1950s, he was commissioned to draw a series of portraits of writers and poets for the literary journal Meanjin. In 1961 Kahan received a commission to draw a series of portraits of contemporary Australian artists, which illustrated articles by John Hetherington published in the Age weekly literary magazine. These drawings were later donated to and exhibited at the National Gallery of Victoria. In 1962 Kahan’s painting of Patrick White was awarded the 1962 Archibald Prize.

This poster, Australian imagination XVII, 1973, combines a series of portrait sketches of prominent Australians that was commissioned in 1972 by Champion Papers, New York, for the periodical Imagination. Depicting individuals from all walks of life—including visual and performing artists, politicians, writers and sports people—the poster is a fascinating document of some of the people who contributed to the culture and life of late-twentieth-century Australia. It is interesting to note that the portrait of Joseph Brown, located at the far left of the fifth row, is closely related to the pencil drawing by Kahan which was also donated with this collection.

1 Louis Kahan, quoted in J. Hetherington, Australian Painters: Forty Profiles, Melbourne, 1963, p. 85.

Kirsty M. Grant