Furnace worker

The steelworkers at their work remained the most inspiring thing for me..... and the steel works were like a huge modern cathedral. (Roy Dalgarno, see Griffiths, Anna (2001), 'Roy Dalgarno 1910-2001’, Art & Australia, Vol 39, Issue 2, p 237).
Roy Dalgarno (1910-2001) was an Australian social realist artist whose engagement with working class politics began in his teens with his association with the revolutionary Melbourne magazine Strife, and as a member of the Communist party between 1933-49. He associated with artists of a similar political bent including Noel Counihan, Nutter Buzacott, James Cant and Dora Chapman whose work, like his, sought to depict the lives of working people, and their political and economic struggle.
Dalgarno sought to depict the reality of workers in dangerous and physically taxing industries such as mining, cane cutting, shearing, fisheries, steel manufacture and the wharves, as well as the working classes and poor he encountered in remote Australia, Europe and India. This etching is an energetic and dynamic image that shows the dangerous and taxing conditions faced by steelworkers. It that pays homage to the hard and perilous work undertaken by such men, lending dignity and respect to their labour, and reflects the esteem with which they were held by the artist.