Brett Whiteley was an Australian painter who was deeply influenced by Vincent van Gogh and post-war British painters such as Francis Bacon.
Brett Whiteley was an Australian painter who was deeply influenced by Vincent van Gogh and post-war British painters such as Francis Bacon. He lived amidst the denizens of the Chelsea Hotel during a stay in New York during the late 1960s, increasing the scale and emotional intensity of his paintings while gathering inspiration from the fast pace of urban life. Whiteley often cited the Vietnam War and his abuse of drugs and alcohol as the impetus for his work, as evidenced in The American Dream, a monumental work spanning nearly 72 feet covered in street debris and collaged photographs. Born on April 7, 1939 in Sydney, Australia, he died on June 15, 1992 of a heroin overdose in Thirroul, Australia at the age of 53. Today, Whiteley’s work can be found in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, and the National Gallery of Australia, among others.