Heide's exhibition of works by Albert Tucker is a sort of home-coming for the Melbourne artist, who spent formative years there in the 1940s under the patronage of the Museum's founders John and Sunday Reed. Tucker and his fellow 'Angry Penguins' (writers and artists, including Sidney Nolan and Max Harris) were at the vanguard of Australian modernism, rejecting realist painting and conservative values in favour of surrealism and critique of Australian society.
This exhibition, curated by Sue Cramer, draws on the 2015 bequest of works by Tucker's wife Barbara. It includes works made during Tucker's war-time station within the Heidelberg Military Hospital, paintings critiquing the nightlife of Melbourne during those years, and his now-iconic visions of the Australian landscape, created in the 1960s after more than a decade abroad.