Victor RUBIN
Born in Sydney 1950
Painter, draftsman and lecturer, Victor Rubin is one of Australia's most important painters. He began exhibiting in the 1970's and has held over 40 solo exhibitions and is represented in all major state and federal galleries and many regional galleries in NSW, Victoria and South Australia. He is also represented overseas in the Museum of Fine Art in Taipei, Auckland City Gallery in New Zealand and in private collections in Europe and America.
Rubin has a Diploma of Art Education from the National Art School. His work has been included in major exhibitions such as Australian Perspecta (1983, 1985) and in 1990 he was awarded a residency at the Cite Internationale Des Arts, Paris. He has been a finalist in the Archibald and the Sulman Prize on a number of occasions.
Rubin's paintings are contorted mixtures of life, love, art, philosophy, myth and mysticism. They surge with mounds and masses of images fragmented by shear angles and displaced perspectives. Rubin paints the reality of what lies beneath.
In much of Rubin's work there are nods to the Europeans - Picasso, Max Ernst and de Kooning with their sharp, rhythmic-fluidity and staccato, vascular convulsions. But there is also great respect for the Australian artists: Olsen, Perceval and more recently the late master surrealist James Gleeson. In fact, John Olsen, was the subject of his 2010 Archbald Prize entry titled "John Olsen - A Diptych - Part I Seated: Part II In his bath."
