Joy Hester and Friends

Australian artist Joy Hester (1920-1960) was a regular exhibitor in the Contemporary Art Society exhibitions in Melbourne and the only woman artist in the Angry Penguins circle, yet her art received little critical recognition until after her death.

Hester created a substantial body of work, primarily brush and ink drawings, distinguished by the concentrated focus of her vision on the human face to convey intensely felt emotion.

Hester's work was closely bound up with her remarkable life story and personality--her intensity and vitality as a young artist during the war years when she was married to Albert Tucker, her struggle with Hodgkins disease, and her passionate and fulfilling relationship with Gray Smith from the late 1940s until her intimely death at the age of 40.

Deborah Hart traces Hester's artistic development from her student drawings, to her powerful shell-shocked faces of the mid-40s that drew upon film footage of the Nazi concentration camps, and the personal images of lovers and children in the 1950s.