Former Archibald winner and Australia’s oldest working artist Guy Warren has died.
King Street Gallery on William in Sydney, which represents him, announced the 103-year-old’s death on Friday.
Mr Warren died at 5am on Friday, June 14, after a short period in palliative care.
“Our thoughts are with his two children, Paul and Joanna, of whom Guy said, ‘They are the best thing I have ever done,’” gallery directors Robert and Randi Linnegar said in a statement.
They said Mr Warren would be greatly missed and described him as a ‘wonderful, kind-hearted, incredibly intelligent, funny and thoughtful person and artist’ who was ‘dedicated to the education, expression and encouragement of the visual arts’.
Acclaimed artist Guy Warren has died (pictured in his Greenwich studio)
A portrait Mr. Warren painted of himself decades ago. He later received an Order of Australia Medal
Mr. Warren was a dedicated painter for the past 80 years and mentored hundreds of young artists during his career.
“He mentored hundreds of young artists over the course of his long and important artistic career,” the pair said.
“The world will be worse off for having lost this groundbreaking 103-year-old painter, teacher, philosopher, holder of history and storyteller.”
Mr Warren was born in Goulburn, NSW, in 1921 and spent some time as a teenager in the army deployed to Papua New Guinea.
He returned to Australia to study art, where he painted for the next 80 years and had more than 50 solo exhibitions around the world since 1955.
A portrait of him by Peter Wegner won the Archibald Prize in 2021
His work has varied across genres throughout his career, with his portrait of Bert Flugelman, The Wingman, winning him the Archibald Prize in 1985.
Mr Warren also won the Art Gallery of New South Wales Trustees’ Watercolor Award in 1979, and the Bronze Medal at the 4th International Triennial of Drawing in Poland in 1988.
He received the Medal of the Order of Australia for services to the arts in 1999, and the Australia Medal in 2013.
The artist also received two honorary doctorates in fine arts from the University of Wollongong and the University of Sydney in 2007 and 2008.
His work is included in collections in every state gallery in Australia, as well as the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, the British Museum, the National Library in Beijing and the Taipei Fine Arts Museum.