1951 Andrew Sibley undertook National Service Training with the Royal Australian Navy after which he spent a short time working in Port Moresby in PNG before returning to Brisbane.

In 1950s Andrew Sibley began formal training as a painter in Brisbane and worked with some of the most famous Australian artists including Charles Blackman, Clifton Pugh, Jon Molvig and Ian Fairweather, and Roy Churcher they became the nuclei of two different art groups that enriched the local art milieu. Sibley became a key member of the so-called “Brisbane School” together with Molvig, Churcher and Ian Fairweather (Bribie Island).

1960 Andrew Sibley held his first solo exhibition at Rowes Arcade Gallery in Edward Street Brisbane. A key work that year, The Shire Hall (1960) is indicative of Sibley’s strong emerging style and use of colour.

1962 Sibley exhibited at the Whitechapel Gallery in London and was included in “Australian Painting Colonial, Impressionist, Contemporary” at the Tate Gallery, London.

1962 Andrew Sibley won Australia's richest art award, the £1000 Transfield Art Prize for his painting The Bathers. At the same time, the prominent Sydney gallerist Rudy Komon signed Sibley and he joined a stable of Australia’s best contemporary artists including Melburnians Fred Williams, Clifton Pugh, George Baldessin, John Brack, Leonard French and Jan Senbergs, Jon Molvig, John Olsen, and Robert Dickerson.

Selected Exhibitions

Sibley’s exhibitions received strong attendances and critical acclaim while his work was bought by state galleries and private collectors. In subsequent years, he was regularly hung in the Archibald, Wynne and Blake prizes. It is notable that from 1960 to the end of his life, Sibley had more than 60 solo exhibitions to great commercial success.

Andrew Sibley was also noticed outside of Australia.

1963 Sibley was shortlisted in numerous prizes and was hung in “Australian Painting Today touring Europe”, and “Young Painters Biennale”, Paris. By the mid-1960s, Sibley’s paintings were being included in significant exhibitions in both Japan and the USA in Washington.

1967 Andrew Sibley met Irena Sibley (née Pauliukonis) and followed her to Sydney, where they were married. The Sibleys made their home in Melbourne.

1967-1987 Andrew Sibley was a significant art educator and a Senior Lecturer at RMIT University and Head of Painting at Monash University from 1990-1999.

A perfectionist, one of Sibley’s biographers recounts that Andrew Sibley once destroyed about ten years’ of work.

Literature: David Thomas in Andrew Sibley: An Epic of the Everyman, Sibley followed his own

1970 Andrew Sibley work included in an exhibition titled "Miniaturen '70 International" in West Germany.

1972 Andrew Sibley undertook a residency in Berlin. Sibley’s connection to Germany continued throughout his life with two more shows in the mid-1970s.

In the mid-1980’s Andrew Sibley had numerous exhibitions in Cologne

2017 Andrew Sibley was awarded a retrospective of his work that was held in Berlin.

Most significantly artists such as Max Beckman, Paul Klee, Edmund Munch, Francis Bacon directly influenced him; Sibley’s affinity with German and European Art was based on more than just his exhibiting there. These artistic remained a key part of his work throughout Andrew Sibley highly successful career.

2015 Sibley suffered a fall though in his final months in care, Sibley began to sketch again and some of these works, made with pen on paper, were amongst his last shown during his life. Andrew Sibley died in Melbourne on 3 September 2015.

Sibley’s work is represented in all the major institutional collections in Australia including National Galleries of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of NSW, Queensland Art Gallery, Art Gallery of SA, Parliament House Canberra, Australian National Portrait Gallery, Tarrawarra Museum of Art, and all regional galleries throughout Australia.

Andrew Sibley work is held in significant collections in Asia, Europe and the United States including the Australian Embassy Collection Washington USA.

A dedicated figurative painter for most of his life, Andrew Sibley career spanned more than six decades, the popularity of Sibley's work among the country's art establishment fluctuated despite critical acclaim both here and overseas.

This was especially true during the 1970s as he eschewed a trend towards a more nationalistic style of expressionism in favour of a European-influenced aesthetic.

Andrew Sibley is a renowned as artist, notable in the Archibald Prize. Sibley work is the subject of a 1993 monograph by the Canberra-based art historian Sasha Grishin.

Andrew Sibley work is represented in all Australian national and state galleries, leading municipal, university and regional galleries, and private collections in Australia and abroad including Parliament House and Australian National Regional galleries in Ballarat, Bendigo, Launceston, Mornington, Shapparton, Townsville and Australian Embassy in Washington, State libraries in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland.

According to McCulloch’s Encyclopedia of Australian Art (St. Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1994), Sibley’s work has remained distinctive for over 40 years of productive output. Andrew Sibley has held annual exhibitions in Melbourne and has been the subject of a number of publications including Rodney Hall’s, Focus on Andrew Sibley (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1968) and Sasha Grishin’s, Andrew Sibley (East Roseville, NSW: G & B Arts International; distributed by Craftsman House, 1993).

Sibley’s work is widely represented in Australian galleries and the State libraries of New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland.

Andrew Sibley was a painter and teacher, he arrived in Australia from England in 1948, having studied at the Gravesend School of Art. Andrew Sibley was associated with Jon Molvig from 1958 to 1963. Andrew Sibley moved to Melbourne in 1966 and held annual exhibitions there for more than thirty years. From 1966 to 1990 Andrew Sibley lecturer in Fine Arts at RMIT a Head of Painting in the Monash University Faculty of Art and Design.

Return top