NAP Contemporary

Ken Reinhard

Australia

Last year sadly marked the passing of pioneering Australian Pop artist Ken Reinhard AM (b.1936) on 14th September, at the age of 88. Born in country NSW, Reinhard lived most of his life in Sydney with his artist wife Barbara and their two children. Beginning his artistic career in the mid 1950s, Reinhard was a celebrated pioneer at the forefront of Australia’s Pop Art movement of the 1960s, bringing Pop to centre stage in 1964 with his Sulman Prize winning satirical work 'Public private preview'.

By 1968 Reinhard was integrating early computer technology into his large-scale assemblages, breaking new ground in Pop, Op and Kinetic Art.

“Reinhard is one of those artists who is succeeding in pushing the frontiers of art beyond their earlier limits. He, and others like him, are creating works of art which force us to re-examine the whole nature of art and oblige us to search for new definitions to encompass the changes they are making.” James Gleeson (sun herald Sep 8 1968, p. 141).