Rafael Gurvich

About Rafael Gurvich

Born in 1949 in Melbourne, Rafael Gurvich studied Architecture at the University of Melbourne for two years before transferring to the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 1969, where he gained an Associateship Diploma and Fellowship Diploma in painting.

Gurvich completed his studies in 1972, the same year he was awarded the Elaine Targett Drawing Prize by the Hawthorn City Art Gallery. Two years later, he held his first solo exhibition at the Ewing Gallery in Melbourne, and designed the cover of the book Applestealers, published by Outback Press.

In 1975 Gurvich was awarded a Standard Grant by the Visual Arts Board of Australia. In the same year he left for Europe, visiting Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. Travelling was to become one of the major stimulants to his work.

On his return to Australia, Gurvich was commissioned in 1977 to make a Member Print by the Print Council of Australia, and his work was also exhibited as part of the Mornington Peninsula Drawing Prize, among other group shows.

The following year, Gurvich held his first solo exhibition in Sydney, at the Macquarie Galleries. A second solo exhibition was held in 1980, in which he presented his limited edition books of etchings and poetry.

1981 saw Gurvich travel to Indonesia, Singapore, Macau and Hong Kong. This expedition inspired him to produce the Javanese Rhythms series of etchings, which were later exhibited at Powell Street Graphics, along with images produced from his 1984 visit to Japan.

In 1986, while minding a small farmlet, Gurvich began incorporating animal figures into his work. As anthropomorphic expressions of humour and optimism, these figures featured in many of the images reproduced in Gurvich's book, Rafael Gurvich: Nothing but blue skies, published in 1988.

Gurvich was commissioned in 1995 to create two designs for mosaic floors in the International Terminal at Tullamarine Airport in Melbourne, which have since been installed.

Rafael Gurvich has held more than twenty solo exhibitions of his paintings and prints, most recently at the Flinders Lane Gallery in Melbourne. Throughout his career, Gurvich has developed a unique pictorial vocabulary, reworking his own signs and motifs to create images which celebrate the joy of life.

Gurvich's work can be found in the Australian National Gallery, the National Gallery of Victoria, Parliament House, Canberra, as well as several university and regional galleries around Australia, and the Vilnius University Library in Lithuania.

Rafael Gurvich currently lives on Philip Island in Victoria.

Source: Chrysalis Publishing web site with permission

For more on Rafael Gurvich see
http://www.chrysalis.com.au/artists.asp?intArtistID=8