Australian avant-garde artist, represented in the collections of all the large Australian galleries, and twice winner of the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman prizes. He held many exhibitions, and lived and painted in Australia as well as Italy, England, Fiji and the United States. In November 2020, his painting Henri’s Armchair, from his iconic Lavender Bay series, broke the Australian record, selling at auction for A$6.136 million.
He was a student at the Julian Ashtron School before winning a travelling scholarship to Italy in 1959. In 1961 he was chosen to represent Australia at the UNESCO Young painters’ Convention in Paris and received wide publicity when he won the international prize at the Paris Biennale. Whiteley returned to Australia in 1961 but by the late ’70s, the struggle and tension that had charged his early work had been diverted into his personal life and his battle with heroin became public knowledge.
Part of his work Alchemy (1972–1973) was featured on the cover of the Dire Straits live album Alchemy (1984) although it had the addition of a guitar with lips held by a hand.
On 16 January 1976, his Self-Portrait in a Studio, where the haunted face of an addict peers from the canvas, won the Archibald Prize, which he won again on 20 January 1978 with Art, Life and the Other Thing, where his hand is caught between a brush and a syringe. He also won the Wynne Prize for landscapes in 1977, 1978 and 1984 and the Sulman Prize in 1976 and 1978. The year 1978 was the only one in which all three prizes have been won simultaneously by the same person.
On 15 May 1962, Whiteley married Wendy Julius and they had a daughter, Arkie Whiteley, born in London in 1964, who became an actress. The couple divorced in 1989. On 15 June 1992 at age 53 he was found dead from opiate overdose in a motel room in Thirroul, north of Wollongong.
Link to Wikipedia biography