Born in Melbourne in 1937, Dale Hickey graduated from design and illustration at Swinburne Technical College, Melbourne, in 1957. His early training informed Hickey’s crisp delineation of images and forms, being a persistent feature of his practice over the ensuing six decades. Hickey’s first solo exhibition was at Toorak Galleries, Melbourne, in 1964, leading to his inclusion in the all-important 1968 National Gallery of Victoria exhibition ‘The Field’, curated by John Stringer and Brian Finemore. He later studied in the United States and Europe in 1971 and 1977, lecturing in painting at the Phillip Institute (now RMIT) from 1973 to 1989. His major retrospectives include a 1988 exhibition at Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, and the 2008 exhibition ‘Dale Hickey: Life in A Box’ at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne. Hickey remains a seminal figure in the Australian art world, gracing public collections nationally. His art bridges the hard-edged Colourfield movement, Conceptualism and post-Modernism.