Fred Cress (1938-2009) emerged from humble beginnings to establish a dynamic artistic career that challenged orthodoxy at every turn. Born in Poona, India, in the dying days of the British overseas empire, Cress settled with his family in Birmingham, England, he began studying art at the Birmingham College of Art. He emigrated from the United Kingdom to Australia in 1962 and became an art teacher in Wangaratta.
From modest beginnings, by the 1970s he became one of the most successful artists of his generation in Australia. The critic and gallery director Patrick McCaughey hailed him as a “leading light in new painterly abstraction”. His work was included in the so-called Ten Little Australians show, 1974-75, which toured Europe with the help of the Visual Arts Board and endorsed by Prime Minister Gough Whitlam.
It was figuration, though, that framed Cress’s long career. Having been disappointed in New York upon meeting his artistic idols in the United States, and undergoing tumult in his personal life in the early 1980s, his art began to develop. His return to the human form in the 1980s caused much consternation from fellow artists and critics, a turn as decried as Bob Dylan’s move from folk to rock. But he continued to distinguish himself and receive validation for his brilliance from the art establishment and public alike, winning the 1988 Archibald Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, as well as the same year’s people’s choice award. In 1995, a major survey show was held at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the same year he judged the Sulman Prize.
Cress exhibited for the whole of his life in Australia and overseas. He represented Australia at the Indian Triennale, New Delhi, 1982, and received residencies in New York and Paris. In 2003 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia for services to the visual arts. In the later years of his life he divided his time between Sydney and a rural property in Burgundy, France. He died in 2009, aged 71.
