Australia�s marvelous light and scenery have contributed to a tradition of outstanding painting. Painting and sculpture enjoyed such a big popularity in the mid-1970s that it became a commonplace to talk of an �art boom�, with buyers and business investors paying very high prices for local Australian works. This activity was partly reflected in the construction of the new National Art Gallery in Canberra and the spectacular million-dollar art purchases such as Pollock�s �Blue Poles�.

Melbourne was the early focus for painting after World War 2. A group of figurative painters emerged which for a long time was identified as the �Australian school�. Its practitioners included Sidney Nolan, whose series on Ned Kelly the bushranger became national icons. (painting below-right, "Duck and Dog Hotel by Sidney Nolan) Then there�s Albert Tucker, whose gnarled Aussie faces on the cover illustrations helped make Donald Horne�s novel �The Lucky Country� a bestseller.

Also in Melbourne, Fred Williams established himself as the most important landscape painter of the post-war years � possibly in the history of Australian painting � with his haunting, semi-abstract depictions of Outback Australia. William�s wonderful evocations of the arid Australian landscape rival the originality of Aboriginal art, which is now much sought after by collectors worldwide.

Sydney, on the other hand, became in the early 1970s, the centre for abstract expressionist movement. The expressionist painters movement drew upon earlier painters such as Ian Fairweather and Godfrey Miller, and was soon experimenting with hard edge, colour field and expressionist modes. John Olsen painted a landscape series called �The You Beaut Country� which summed up the optimism of the time. Then there were younger painters such as Brett Whiteley who became the most famous before he died of a heroin overdose in 1992.