Pro Hart; legendary painter of outback Australia
Hyfler/Rosner
March 28, 2006 Tuesday 2:41 PM AEST
Great artist Hart dies in the outback - where he belonged
http://www.bestfineart.com/prohart/pro-hart.html
http://prohart.com.au/
http://www.abc.net.au/dimensions/dimensions_in_time/Transcripts/s549612.htm
During working hours, Pro Hart hurled spaghetti,
splattered tomato sauce and chucked jam.
"Oh Mr Hart, what a mess!"
A legendary painter of outback Australia, Pro Hart
was almost as famous for his television commercials for a
stain-resistant carpet.
But whether it was his sweeping landscapes, or his
30 seconds of TV fame, Pro Hart became a household name in
Australia - and one of the most popular contemporary artists
of our time.
Surrounded by his family, the 77-year-old died
early today at his Broken Hill home after battling motor
neurone disease since late last year.
His son, Kym Hart, said the carpet commercials were
characteristic of his father's lifelong reputation for
cheekiness - and love of art.
"He's always been a bloody ratbag," Kym said today.
"Throwing things, and crawling through it, he just
oozed art - he couldn't help himself.
"He was a magic bloke and painting was his purpose
in life.
"Rather than writing at school, doing compositions,
he drew - he just had the flow.
"He was seven and drawing people, and life and
everything around him, and from there everyone else realised
he had an amazing talent.
"He would paint after work, and before work and at
the weekends."
Asked to explain his father's popularity,
42-year-old Kym replied: "He painted Australians in their
own environment, doing their own things.
"The colours, the people - he just loved everything
about the place."
Since last December, when he was diagnosed with the
debilitating muscle-wasting disease, the once-prolific
painter had been unable to lift a brush.
Kevin Charles Hart, as his parents named him when
he was born in Broken Hill on May 30, 1928, spent his early
years on the family's sheep property, Larloona Station near
Menindee.
A self-taught artist, his preoccupation with both
art and the Australian outback started early as a young
miner.
He was tagged with the nickname, 'Professor' or
`Pro', because of his passion for inventing things.
He worked a double life for 18 years - toiling
during the day and turning to his canvases at night.
Using mainly oils and acrylics, he layered, glazed,
scumbled and scratched - or as he put it: "I chucked the
paint on."
He created sculptures with welded steel, bronze and
ceramics, as well as being something of a hobbyist mechanic.
Two years after marrying Raylee June Tonkin in
1960, Pro was discovered by a gallery director in Adelaide
and his first exhibition was a sellout.
Since then, he has exhibited all over the world,
including London, New York, Paris and Tokyo.
He has also illustrated several books.
Once fame had placed him among the art world's
financial high flyers, Pro also became a crime fighter.
He was one of the first painters to include in his
works a secretly-placed DNA sample taken from his cheek
cells to stop forgers.
At no stage did he lose his fondness for his
"Silver City" home, raising a family and building an art
gallery there.
"We would go to exhibitions all over the world - to
Paris, London, New York - and dad just wanted to come home,"
Kym said.
A state funeral for the outback artist will be held
in Broken Hill next Tuesday.
The city's mayor, Ron Page, said the town loved him
as much as he loved it.
"He was a fantastic person. If you went to see him
one-on-one, he would talk to you all day," Mr Page said.
"Everyone will have a story to tell - how kind, how
generous, and what a fantastic person Pro was.
"He loved our city and we loved him."
Kym said that after his recent ill health, his
family decided on Friday to cease his medication.
"The appalling thing about this horrible disease
was that his mind was sharp as a tack," Kym said.
"Not being able to move his hands must have been
just so frustrating for him."
Much of the artist's private collection was sold
earlier this month, with prices ranging up to $45,000.
Amanda Phillips, director of Sydney's House of
Phillips Fine Art, who attended the sale, praised Pro Hart
for his 40 year-plus contribution to Australian art.
"He's made a huge contribution to the country and
touched so many people's lives," she said.
"People just love him."
In 1976, Pro was awarded an MBE for his services to
art in Australia and in 1982 received an Honorary Life
Membership of Society International Artistique for
outstanding artistic achievement.
He died at home surrounded by his wife Raylee and
five children, all of whom paint.
Pro Hart: loved by the people, not 'art mafia'
By Larry Schwartz
The Age
March 29, 2006
AUSTRALIAN art historian Bernard Smith remembered yesterday
the surprise expressed when "the most powerful art critic in
the world" spoke favourably of a painting by an ex-miner
from Broken Hill.
Mr Smith, then professor of contemporary art at the
University of Sydney, was showing New York critic Clement
Greenberg and his admirers around a gallery in the late
1960s.
"A very interesting passage of painting there, isn't it?"
Greenberg said of a work by Pro Hart, who died aged 77 at
his home in Broken Hill early yesterday after battling motor
neurone disease since late last year.
"And all the others (were) whispering, 'He likes Pro Hart',"
Mr Smith recalled. "They couldn't believe it."
The artist himself, born Kevin Charles Hart, once said: "The
art mafia doesn't like me."
Debate on the merits of one of Australia's most commercially
successful and prolific artists continued yesterday as news
of his death emerged.
"I think for a few years there he was an extraordinarily
good painter," said Stuart Purves, owner of Australian
Galleries in Melbourne and Sydney. The first painting he
sold 40 years ago was by Hart "and one of the problems with
all sorts of people is that fame doesn't necessarily favour
them.
"Although I wouldn't want to say he wasn't a good painter, I
think somehow or other, through the attention that was given
to him and perhaps the demands that followed, that attention
somehow or other encroached upon that lovely innocence."
Age critic Robert Nelson writes today: "I can understand why
people like his work (because it's warm and friendly and
approachable) but ultimately, Hart's pictures lack
credibility. They aren't really celebrations of the
Australian bush so much as a triumph of corn, a festival of
brown effects, produced by a brush in imitation of a
sponge."
Hart worked in the lead and zinc mines of Broken Hill for
years before he was discovered in the early 1960s by a city
gallery looking for outback images.
Professor Smith describes him as "a naive painter . who did
it on his own. That is to say he found it out of himself."
His local federal MP, Community Services Minister John Cobb,
said yesterday he had always been stunned that the
"Australian National Gallery refused to hang any of Pro
Hart's work despite his special place on the Australian art
scene".
The National Gallery has an etching, a 1978 Christmas card,
from Hart, who had his DNA impregnated into his paintings to
prevent forgery. Hart's work is not represented in the
collection of the National Gallery of Victoria. It released
a statement yesterday saying that Hart had developed a
"highly distinctive style which was admired and enjoyed by a
huge number of people. His ability to thin paint down and
work with great fluidity and dexterity reflects one of the
stylistic phenomena of the 1960s and suggests he was
influenced by Sidney Nolan, another great interpreter of the
outback."
The Art Gallery of NSW has none of Hart's work.
Christopher Menz, director of the Art Gallery of South
Australia, which has two Hart landscapes, said Hart had made
"quite an important contribution" to Australian art.
Christie's director John Dwyer said the highest price paid
for a Hart was $99,875 for The Banjo Paterson Mural, sold in
May 2003, and he predicted "a complete reinvention of his
prices and his standing".
Mr Dwyer said an average range at auction was $15,000 to
$25,000, and the average had slowly increased in the past 18
months.
He said Hart had sold well in Britain, the United States and
Japan "and that would only happen with people like Sidney
Nolan, Arthur Boyd or Brett Whiteley".
Mr Dwyer compared Hart with Sydney artist Ken Done. They
were both "highly successful, very commercial, great
promoters and "at the end of the day they were also very
good artists".