A child's war: the First World War sketchbooks of Frank Hinder

Frank Hinder (1906-1992) was one of the most inventive Australian artists of the twentieth century. He is best remembered for his experiments with abstraction, colour and movement, which were inspired by cubism and futurism. Hinder also played an important role as a camouflage officer in the Second World War. However, it was another war that first captured his artistic imagination. Hinder was only eight years old when the First World War broke out. The images of the war in Europe being sent back to Australian shores obviously fascinated the young boy, and he filled sketchbooks with drawings of ships, castles, zeppelins and tanks. We can steal a glimpse of life on the home front from the subjects that captured Hinder's imagination. Many of his drawings bring to mind the 'boys own' adventures of popular fiction. However, he also depicted famous ships from the Royal Navy and the Royal Australian Navy, drew the newfangled armoured vehicles appearing on the battlefields and copied the medals and flags of Britain and its allies, all of which he probably saw printed in newspapers and periodicals. The following drawings come from two of Hinder's childhood sketchbooks, which he made between the ages of nine and eleven. They were donated to the National Art Archive at the Art Gallery of NSW in 2006 by his daughter Enid Hawkins. 

As an adult artist Hinder developed an interest in the depiction of form, movement and speed. His work in this area followed the experiments of the cubists and futurists, whose work he first encountered while studying in America in the 1920s and 30s. The futurists' use of aeroplanes, cars and trains as a motif to convey the physical experiences of modern life struck a particular chord with him. While in the US, Hinder embraced American artist Jay Hambidge’s theory of 'dynamic symmetry', in which he proposed a system of proportions underlying all living things. This had a profound effect on Hinder, who said 'if you can link into the actual so-called life rhythm in your work then I think you are getting a little bit closer to the universal, whatever-it-is, that makes us tick'. 

In 1941 Hinder was attached to the Australian Imperial Force in New Guinea. On a supposedly routine reconnaissance mission to assess the camouflage of an airfield near the town of Rabaul, his Lockheed bomber crashed on takeoff. He recorded the experience of it in his diary: 'Roared up runway – seemed to take long time to get the tail up … getting close to end of field … lot of noise and racket, tried to protect head and face waiting for next bump and crash. Came to rest and flames shot up all round … Before door opened wondered what it would be like to be incinerated'. He later made sketches of the incident and in 1943 painted this work, in which he attempted to synthesise the twisting of the destroyed fuselage with the white hot heat and light of the engulfing flames.