Noel Counihan

Noel Counihan (4 October 1913 – 5 July 1986) was an Australian social realist painter, printmaker, cartoonist and illustrator active in the 1940s and 1950s in Melbourne. An atheist, communist, and art activist, Counihan made art in response to the politics and social hardships of his times.

Counihan was born on 4 October 1913 in Albert Park, then a working-class suburb of Melbourne. He attended Caulfield Grammar School in 1928. He studied part-time under Charles Wheeler at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School in Melbourne during 1930-31, where he met the social realists and Roy Dalgarno.

Social realism, the belief that art should reflect the realities of society under capitalism, was the artistic doctrine of the Communist Party of Australia, and in 1931 Counihan became a confirmed atheist and a member of the Party. He helped found the Workers Art Guild, and began printmaking, producing linocuts and lithographs for Communist magazine covers and pamphlets as well as designing banners.

During the Great Depression Counihan participated in the "free speech" fights in Brunswick, organised by the Communist Party in response to a Victorian state government law banning "subversive" gatherings. Dozens of members of the Unemployed Workers Movement were arrested, and unemployed meetings at the intersection of Phoenix Street and Sydney Road, Brunswick were dispersed by police. As part of this fight, a young Counihan addressed a crowd from a locked cage on top a truck. Police had to cut him out, to the jeers of the crowd, as he continued speaking.

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