Charles Billich

Bing Mah Yong - Fencing

Aphrodite

Salt Lake City
(Olympiad Citiscape)

Charles Billich

In a painting career spanning some forty years, Charles Billich's art has been shaped by personal experience. The American Sport Art Museum and Archives (ASAMA), in conjunction with the United States Sports Academy added to that experience in February 2000 by presenting him with its 2000 Sport Artist of the Year Award.

As a teenager, Billich was a student dancer with the Opera Corp de Ballet in Rijeka where he attended college. While at college, he also wrote satirical articles for a local Italian-language magazine, earning him a sentence to 10 years of prison by a repressive Communist regime.

The physical and psychological privations were eased for him by other older inmates. Political prisoners became mentors to his own intellectual and artistic growth. While in prison, he read, studied and designed sets for prison plays. Two years into his imprisonment, he was unexpectedly released.

Billich at once sought political asylum in Austria where he studied art at the Volkschocheschule in Salzburg. After he migrated to Australia in 1956, he studied at the Melbourne Institute of Technology and the National Gallery School of Victoria, surviving with every imaginable job until he could support himself as an artist.

Today, Billich paints from what he sees around him. He describes his work as surrealist. He continues to explore themes reflecting his own obsessions, fantasies and thwarted ambitions; ballet and sport, architecture and town planning, eroticism and classicism, portaiture and stage. He paints and draws in all media. He also sculpts in precious and semi-precious metals.

He prides himself on being in touch with people. He abhors elitism and any form of hypocritical pretension in the arts and continues to challenge the norm.

This determination to encourage people to set higher goals was recognized by the Australian Olympic Committee when Billich was appointed the Official Artist to the Australian team at the 1996 Atlanta Games. His inspiration was drawn from the spirit and experience of the Australian athletes. His celebration of sports in the Australian field of honor was an inspiration to our athletes and the general community as we prepared for the journey toward Sydney 2000.