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Donald Brook was born in what he later described as “an industrial slum” in Leeds, Yorkshire,on 8 January 1927. His father was a traveling salesman, a position that enabled the family to move to “a cultural wasteland of lower-middle class environment”. A series of scholarships enabled him to study electrical engineering but he left the degree before graduating and was conscripted into the British Army. After military service he enrolled in an art degree at the University of Durham, under Lawrence Gowing. His sculpture teacher, JR Murray McCheyne, introduced him to Scandinavian influences,but he was more influenced by the humanist approach of Germaine Richter, Reg Butler and Alberto Giacometti. On graduation he was awarded a scholarship to the British School in Athens, for Crete, but did not attend. Instead he travelled through Greece and Crete, admiring especially Cycladic sculptures. He then spent a year in Paris where he worked for the Societé CIAM. After returning to London he worked for a company making props for the film industry, including the armor for Richard Burton in Alexander The Great. It was at this time that he met his wife, Phyllis, a dancer.
After a number of successful exhibitions, he was appointed to teach sculpture at what was to become the Ahmad’s Bello University in Zaria, Nigeria where he stayed for two years. On his return to London he held a number of successful exhibitions in London, before being approached to join the Digswell Trust in Hertfordshire. Here he worked in a community with Ralph Brown, Hans Coper, and Peter Collingwood. Henry Moore was a close neighbour.
At Phyllis’s suggestion he applied to John Passmore to undertake a PhD in philosophy at the Australian National University. They arrived in Canberra in 1962,where they found a small but lively intellectual community under the leadership of HC (Nugget) Coombs. It was at this time he began writing art criticism for the Canberra Times and also designed exhibition spaces for temporary art exhibitions. After completing his PhD in 1962 he taught in the philosophy department.

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2018
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2018

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