painter, sculptor, designer and art teacher, was born Annemarie Haas in Vienna. As a child, she studied art in a school for talented children under Professor Cizek. Following Hitler’s invasion of Austria, her family migrated to Victoria in 1939 and Graham enrolled at the Melbourne Technical College (now RMIT). In 1948-49 she attended the National Gallery School and, later, classes at the George Bell School.
A travelling scholarship offered by the Italian Government found Graham studying under Emilio Greco in 1960, as well as in the restoration department of the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, and the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. This experience expanded her knowledge of art techniques and, together with a short period of study in Salzburg under Oskar Kokoschka, confirmed her own artistic directions. It also set a pattern of future travel with its attendant stimulation – such as that offered to Graham as the artist to an archaeological expedition on the Greek Island of Andros in 1971.
During the 1950s Graham devoted a great deal of energy to encouraging children’s creativity through her classes, through articles for Woman’s Day and Home and the Age , and through weekly television programmes. Her first solo exhibition, which included sculpture, was held in 1957 in Melbourne, but it was with the positive response to her first European exhibition of paintings and drawings in Naples in 1960 that Graham felt the direction of her work vindicated. On her return, she lectured part-time in composition, design and art techniques at the School of Architecture, Melbourne University (1961-66). Commissions included a fountain in the Southern Cross Hotel courtyard and, in 1969, a fountain for the Park Towers apartments in Spring Street.
Meanwhile, Graham’s interest in landscape began to develop in her drawings and paintings; from the mid-1960s her work explores various landscape and figurative themes. In 1966 she won the Springbrook Prize for Painting, and that year also saw a film produced about her drawings, Daydreams , the first of a number of film and television programmes which have regularly appeared on the artist. In the 1970s her drawings were recognised with the Australian newspaper Drawing Prize and the Jacaranda Art Prize, while her painting skills attracted the Carlo Levi Art Prize and the La Trobe Valley Acquisitive Prize. In 1979, the International Year of the Child, Children Playing was selected for a UNICEF greeting card. The following year Graham won one of the Melbourne Centenary Exhibition Awards for painting.
Since 1960 Graham has held solo exhibitions – often more than one – nearly every year. She has shown in all capital cities, in regional centres and in London, Zurich, Auckland and Vienna. She had also participated in various group exhibitions and her work has been accepted in many prestigious art competitions. She is represented in private collections in Australia and overseas, and in a number of university, state and Victorian regional gallery collections.
- Writers:
- Kirby, Sandy
- Date written:
- 1995
- Last updated:
- 2011
