Biography

Born in Melbourne in 1929, Bruce Petty is best known as one of Australia�s most influential political artists.
His works include, however, not only studies of institutions and events through his cartoons, but sculpture, script, assemblage, film and more recently, printmaking.

Petty gained his first animation job in 1949 at Bill and Harry Owens� Animation Studio, which led to a position drawing for the Melbourne Heralds� Colorgravure Publishing unit.

Between 1955 and 1960 Petty worked in London as a freelance newspaper illustrator and cartoonist. In these years he contributed drawings to Punch (London), The New Yorker and Esquire.

On his return to Australia, Petty confirmed his position as a political satirist, working for the Sydney Bulletin, and, in 1964 became the resident cartoonist for the Daily Mirror. A year later Petty was appointed chief cartoonist for the newly conceived Australian newspaper � a post he held for an extensive period, during which he depicted the moral and military dilemmas of the Vietnam War.

In 1962 Petty visited five Asian countries and produced drawings for his book An Australian Artist in South East Asia. This was the first of many published compilations of Pettys� drawings; others include The Money Book, The Petty Age, and most recently The Absurd Machine.

In 1970 Hearts and Minds, a film made in collaboration with Phillip Adams, showed Pettys� continuing attention to Vietnam as a war zone. In 1972 he made his first animated film Australian History.

In the same year, Petty wrote and designed his first short film for the Australian Broadcasting Commission. A Big Hand for Everyone was an amalgamation of animation, kinetic sculpture, film clips and acted segments which constructed Pettys� vision of mass media and society.

In 1976 Petty wrote and directed a short film Leisure, for which he won the Oscar for animation at the 1977 Academy Awards. Since then he has continued his involvement in filmmaking through diverse projects, including Megalomedia, Clever Country and The Mad Century, the latter to be aired on SBS.

His most recent film Global Haywire, a feature length film combining animation and documentary satire, was screened at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2006, for general release in 2007.

Through his cartoons, Pettys� work has been seen in various exhibitions, including Bringing Down the House presented by the National Museum of Australia, in which Petty was awarded the Peoples Choice award for Best Political Satire.

In 1993 Petty sat on the Cultural Policy Advisory Panel, which was set up to create a charter of cultural rights for recommendation to the Commonwealth Government.

Pettys� cartoons are represented in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, the Victorian Arts Centre, the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, and at a number of University and Regional Galleries around Australia.

His sculptures include Money Machine for ABC TV, a Writeometer for Penguin Books, Environmentograph for Tsukuba trade fair, Creativity beam, for Powerhouse Sydney and a Law Machine.

Petty first experimented in printmaking with lithography in 1960 in London. Since commencing to work with etching and drypoint in 1997, he has produced a comprehensive group of over 60 works.

Bruce Petty was a regular contributor of political cartoons to The Age newspaper, Melbourne and lived in Sydney with his wife, author Kate Grenville.

Bruce Petty died on 6th April 2023, aged 93.

Thank you for subscribing