Albert Tucker (artist) - Group of Artists

Group of Artists

Tucker's perceptive response to the world around him was recognised by two people - Sunday and John Reed. These two saw connections between Tucker's work and other artists, angry too at the social situation.

Sunday and John Reed were members of the Contemporary Arts Society, set up to promote these emerging artists, known as the modernists. The Society was set up in 1938 by George Bell, in opposition to the government Australian Academy of Art, which was believed to promote conservative art and not the modernists.

The modernists included Albert Tucker, Joy Hester, Sidney Nolan, John Perceval, Arthur Boyd and Noel Counihan. These artists met to discuss material on a regular basis. Tucker enjoyed being part of what he saw as a like-minded group of artists, all focused on producing works along similar themes, in response to war, depression and moral degradation. The artists also brought influences from European movements such as Surrealism, Cubism, Expressionism, Dadaism and Constructivism.

From this "Angry" group of modernists, formed a group known as the Angry Penguins, which also included many social realists. The modernists and social realists shared the same concerns, and their work became focused on war and its horrors, along with moral decay and the emergence of Americanism. The Angry Penguins was also a publication that these artists wrote for, published by Max Harris. Tucker’s original influences, Bergner and Vassilieff, were part of this group. The Angry Penguins was the major outlet for the expression of avant-garde ideas.

In 1941, Tucker married fellow artist Joy Hester, and they had a son, Sweeney. It emerged many years later that Tucker was not the boy's biological father—it was probably Australian jazz drummer Billy Hyde, with whom Hester had had a brief affair. When Hester was later diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, she gave Sweeney into the care of the Reeds, who adopted him. Joy Hester died in 1960, and in 1964 Tucker married Barbara Bilcock. Sweeney committed suicide in 1979.