(Helge John) Jon Molvig was born at Mereweather, Newcastle, NSW on 27 May 1923 to Helge Molvig, a Norwegian sailor and Bernadine Ward, whose family settled in northern New South Wales in 1852. After his mother’s early death in 1925, he was cared for by his grandmother, Isobel Ward, and after her death in 1932, by his aunt Eleanor Malley. On completing his primary schooling he worked in a garage and the Newcastle Steelworks.
Molvig enlisted in the Australian Citizen Military Forces 5 December 1941, was called up in the 4th Field Regiment R.A.A. at Greta 12 February 1942 and finally discharged 27 January 1944 after service in New Guinea. His early interest in art was rekindled when he saw the sketches by fellow soldier Stanislaw Payne and enrolled at the Strathfield branch of the East Sydney Technical College under the terms of the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme in 1947. His skill as a draftsman was acknowledged by fellow student (and his long time friend) John Rigby. He exhibited with the Strath Art Group during its active years 1949-1954 but being an intensely private man and a committed individualist, it was also the only organised group in which he ever participated.
His visit to Europe from late 1949-1952 with other students introduced him to the modernist paintings he had known only in reproductions. The work of the German and Norwegian expressionist painters he viewed at the Nasjonalgallerier, Oslo were later to prove very influential. He visited Brisbane in 1953 when his own expressionist leanings were reinforced with the underlying looseness of local art attributable to the senior Brisbane artist W.G. Grant (1876-1951) and established his individual style in paintings such as Crucifixion (private collection). He settled permanently in Brisbane two years later and produced a series of expressive figurative paintings in the years 1956-1957 whose aggressiveness and intensity (eg. Bride and groom 1956, Art Gallery of New South Wales and A twilight of women 1957, Queensland Art Gallery) is almost without parallel in the history of Australian art. In a 15-year survey at the Rudy Komon Gallery in August 1966, James Gleeson admired the strength of Molvig’s work but was dazzled by his output in the years 1955-61. Writing in the Sun Herald Glesson noted:
'No one in Australian art has painted so nakedly as Molvig did at that time. There was no covering his emotions. He had torn away the last skin of reserve, and painted the world he knew in his blood, his nerves and his heart. In a sense it was orgiastic – a great Dionysian acceptance of those ecstatic storms that sometimes blow up from the subconscious with such violence that the government of reason is overwhelmed. Even the paint looks as if it has been blown on the canvas by tremendous gusts of passion.’
The art scene in Brisbane was remarkably conservative so when he took over John Rigby’s classes at the studio beneath St. Mary’s Anglican Church, Kangaroo Point in November 1955 it became a focus for a closely knit group of students and fellow artists and the centre of innovatory art practice. Molvig quickly became the exemplar of the committed artist. He did not impose his own style on a student but created an environment in which they could establish their own voice. Naturally, some were profoundly influenced. The most significant students include John Aland, Maryke Degeus, Gil Jamieson, Mervyn Moriarty, Joy Roggenkamp, Andrew Sibley and Gordon Shepherdson. He was appreciated as a consummate draftsman promoting, in the words of Andrew Sibley 'the malleability of line and mass to create the pulse of the line.’ This was probably his greatest influence locally as he conducted life drawing classes until 1966 as opposed to the two years he taught painting.
Other important associates included his first dealers, Brian and Marjorie Johnstone (with whom he exhibited 1956-59), and the art critic Dr Gertrude Langer. Langer was to be a staunch supporter throughout Molvig’s career though she acknowledged, because of the nature of expressionist art, the unevenness of his production. Another was the director of the Queensland Art Gallery 1961-67, Laurie Thomas. Thomas’s support is evident in awarding Molvig the exhibitions he was invited to judge: the 1963 Perth Prize for Painting ( The family ), the 1964 Finney’s (David Jones) Art Prize ( Under arm still life No. 2 ), the 1966 Corio Five Star Whisky Prize ( The publican ), and the 1969 Gold Coast City Art Prize ( Tree of Man ).
Molvig’s career manifested further radical shifts of style. He exhibited at the Johnstone Gallery (the last at the city venue) in December 1957 before departing on a tour of Central Australia, with fellow painter Maryke Degeus, which became the inspiration of his 'Centralian’ series at the Johnstone Gallery in 1959. Although some of his paintings depicted the dispossession and alienation of the Aboriginal people, the series was more colourful than the preceding work – it was even designated by Dr Langer as 'lyrical’. Shortly afterwards Molvig was the first artist the Sydney dealer Rudy Komon contracted to his gallery with a monthly retainer. This provided Molvig with a stable income but he did not participate in the marked commercial and critical success of the Johnstone Gallery during the 1960s. Rudy Komon held exhibitions of his work in 1960, 1962, 1964, 1966, 1968, 1978 and 1984 and organised exhibitions in other venues; Argus Gallery, Melbourne 1962 and Grand Central Galleries 1966, Kennigo Street Gallery 1966, Johnstone Gallery 1972 and New Central Gallery 1977, all in Brisbane.
The 'Eden industrial’ series 1961-62 marked another shift into the remembered images of his childhood in the industrial city of Newcastle. His need to create a means of expression appropriate to his subject lead to his blow-torching the oil paint to create suitably eroded surfaces for some paintings. Predictably, this was sensationalised in the press. His first major award, the first Transfield Art Prize, 1961, at that time the nation’s richest award, was for one work from the series 'City industrial’. (He had received the Lismore Prizes in 1955 and 1956, the Rowney Drawing Prize in 1960.) Other major paintings include Eden industrial: The garden 1961 (Queensland Art Gallery).
The generative impulse for his work is largely conjectural as he was notoriously reticent in discussing his art and, as frequently, confrontational but his integrity and commitment to his art was unquestioned. His emphasis on figuration included his 'Pale nude’ series (the rendering, however, is more attenuated), dating to 1964 although his work did veer towards abstraction in his last major series, that of 'Tree of Man’ series, in the years 1967-69. These paintings, comprised of target shapes and skeletal forms, were described by Dr. Langer as 'expressive symbolism’ and may have a connection with Patrick White’s book of the same name (published 1955).
The divergence of his techniques becomes even more obvious in his justly famous portraits which include the hewn, massiveness of his Self portrait 1956 (Queensland Art Gallery) the spidery elegance of Janet Mathews 1957 (private collection), the grim monumentality of Russell Cuppaidge 1959 (Queensland Art Gallery) and the voluptuous brushwork depicting a close friend Joy Roggenkamp 1963 (private collection). He entered the Archibald Portrait Prizes at the Art Gallery of New South Wales from 1952 but it was not until 1955 that he was actually hung. Although reviewers considered he merited the prize on several occasions it was not until 1966 that he received the award with his portrait of Charles Blackman (now in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia) and ceased exhibiting there.
The Transfield Prize enabled Molvig to purchase land in the outer Brisbane suburb of Mt. Cotton and after his marriage to Otte van Gilst on 26 August 1963 he devoted a major part of his time to the construction of a house into which they moved in 1967. His output decreased even further during these years as Molvig was now seriously ill. His childhood nephritis, together with the malaria he suffered during the war years and his alcohol intake, finally resulted in kidney failure. Molvig received the first kidney transplant to be performed in Queensland on 17 February, 1970 but died three months later on 15 May.
Although Molvig’s work is highly regarded, especially by artists, it still has not achieved the prominence it merits despite exhibitions toured nationally by the Newcastle Region Art Gallery (curated by Bronwyn Thomas in 1978 and Katrina Rumley in 2002) and the book on his career by Betty Churcher Molvig – the lost antipodean , 1984.
- Writers:
- Cooke, Glenn R.
- Date written:
- 2000
- Last updated:
- 2011
