Clive Guthrie Sold at Auction Prices

b. 1910 - d. 1971

CLIVE GUTHRIE (1910 - 1971)

Born at Dubbo on 29 June 1910, Clive Guthrie in 1930 married artist’s model Joan Bretton in Rockhampton Q. They were both art students at the Workers Art Club. Clive's linocuts were included in the 1933 “Saga” exhibition and with George Finey he drew the cover of the April 1933 issue of Workers’ Art.

By 1939 Clive Guthrie was back at Rockhampton where the CPA had a strong presence, supported by sugar workers. (Fred Paterson, the only CPA candidate elected to parliament, was born at Rockhampton.)

On 29 December 1941 Guthrie enlisted at Paddington and served in New Guinea, being discharged on 4 January 1946. Postwar he joined the Realist Artists' Group. In 1948 he was a finalist for the Sulman Prize (his entry “Native flats, Borneo”) and for the Archibald. In August 1949 his “Shops at Glebe” was exhibited with the Studio of Realist Art at David Jones Art Gallery. In 1950 at the same gallery Prime Minister Menzies was heckled, and Guthrie and a waterside worker were fined for displaying banners opposing the anti communism bill.

Clive Guthrie's marriage to Joan Bretton was brief but it was not until 1950 that they divorced. He then married divorcee Bessie Jean Russell née Mitchell, the subject of his 1948 Archibald entry, to whom he sent drawings of New Guinean indigenous people. Unlike Bessie who never joined a political party, Clive belonged to the CPA; he was also with the Waterside Workers Federation, taking jobs as a painter and decorator. Although damaged by his wartime experiences, he continued to paint and exhibit. He eventually received a repatriation pension.