69 41522 - Godfrey Clive Miller 'Blue Unity' 1954-55

Godfrey Clive Miller
'Blue Unity' 1954-55
Purchased 1969
© John Henshaw Trust

Godfrey Miller was born in New Zealand, where he studied architecture until his enlistment in the New Zealand Army in the First World War. Wounded at Gallipoli, he returned to New Zealand where he completed his studies. In 1920 he moved to Australia and began his career as an artist.

After travelling and studying in Europe during the 1930s Miller returned to Sydney at the onset of the Second World War. While he lived like a recluse, he became an inspirational teacher at the National Art School. Miller's fascination with esoteric spiritualist theories provided him with a blueprint for the conduct of his art and life. Miller worked painstakingly slowly, often spending years on one painting before he considered it finished. He painted with a geometric precision to create mosaic-like images with a pulsating sense of life and the suggestion that everything in the universe coexists or interconnects.

Text © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 2010
From: Ron Radford (ed), Collection highlights: National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2008