AustLit

Josef Ostoja-Kotkowski was born in Golub, Poland. He studied drawing and painting in Golub and at the Academy of Fine Arts, Düsseldorf, Germany. Later he studied at the National Gallery School, Melbourne. He held his first solo show in Adelaide in 1955. He has worked as an artist, stage and industrial designer, cinematographer, electronic experimenter, is represented in art collections in Australia and overseas, has murals in most Australian cities and has won awards in various artistic media. He has travelled in Europe, the USA and Japan. He was awarded a Churchill Fellowship in 1967, a Creative Arts Fellowship from the Australian National University, Canberra in 1971/72, an Australian-American Education Fellowship in 1973 and a Visiting Artist Fellowship from the Victorian Ministry of the Arts in 1976. In 1968 he produced Sound and Image for the Adelaide Festival of Arts; elsewhere, in 1982 a Laser Concert at the Adelaide Festival of Arts, in 1984, a Laser-Kinetics Concert at the Ballarat Begonia Festival and in 1988 exhibited a colour and sound mural at Brisbane EXPO '88.