During both World Wars, Australian art continued to develop despite a period of instability and lack of direction. The Heidelberg era that encapsulated the hopes of the pioneer was long gone, and replaced with the reality of war. The disastrous landings at Gallipoli became a symbol of the emerging national spirit, and formed a theme of identity from which war artists and subsequent artists could explore.
Despite this instability and the war, Australian artists continued to be some of the best in the world. Will Dyson, in 1917, was the first officially commissioned artist to document Australians at war. One of the first official artists commissioned during the Second World War was Ivor Hele, who is regarded by some as one of the greatest Australian war artists. Hele had been serving in North Africa when Major General Sir Thomas Blamey commissioned him in 1941 to record events in the field. Only three Australian women were appointed as war artists. Nora Heysen, who was the only female artist allowed to work in operational areas, began painting on the north coast of New Guinea in 1943 and recorded military nurses working at a casualty station. Stella Bowen, was directed to provide a pictorial record of the activities of Australian forces in the United Kingdom. The War Memorial in Canberra has 46 of her war time paintings. One of her best known pieces is The Bomber Crew, 1944, a painting of seven young airmen, and is especially poignant as before she had completed the work, the airmen were lost in action and she had to complete it from her sketches and photographs.
After World War I, modernist art began to make its presence felt in the Australian art community, causing considerable controversy between rival art movements. In 1921 the Archibald Prize, Australia's most famous art prize for portraiture, was founded. Always a source of controversy, no more so with William Dobell's highly figurative portrait of an artist friend won the prize in 1943 and was challenged in court on the basis that it was a caricature, not a portrait. In the 1930s and 1940s the opening up of Australia's interior saw a merge between Western and Aboriginal art, with European artists imitating Aboriginal styles and some Aboriginal artists adopting Western techniques. The most famous of these is undoubtedly Albert Namatjira, who painted landscapes, rather than the traditional aboriginal style of dot painting.
Between the wars,Margaret Preston was the leading protagonist for Modernism, particularly in Sydney. In 1942, Preston argued that, the Australian artist could draw on the art of the country’s Indigenous peoples, however ‘it is necessary that they should seek from other sources knowledge and inspiration for their craft, thereby combining to produce a National Australian culture" Margaret Preston was famous for her enthusiasm in seeking to draw on Australia’s cultural diversity in her artwork.
In the 1940s a new generation of artists began experimenting with styles such as surrealism and other techniques. Arthur Boyd and Albert Tucker were prominent, and a number of artists spent time at Heide, a house in Heidelberg - the site of the Heidelberg school several decades before. Amongst the artists that spent time there are Joy Hester and, most prominently Sidney Nolan, whose iconic Ned Kelly images are probably better known than the artist himself.