Noel Counihan (October 4, 1913 - July 5, 1986) was an Australian social realist painter. Counihan was born in Albert Park, then a working-class suburb of Melbourne. He studied part-time under Charles Wheeler at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School in Melbourne during 1930-31, where he met the social realists Herbert McClintock and Roy Dalgarno.
Social realism, the belief that art should reflect the realities of society under capitalism, was the artistic doctrine of the Communist Party of Australia, and in 1931 Counihan became a confirmed atheist and a member of the Party. He helped found the Workers Art Guild, and began printmaking, producing linocuts and lithographs for Communist magazine covers and pamphlets as well as designing banners.
During the Great Depression Counihan participated in the "free speech" fights in Brunswick, organised by the Communist Party in response to a Victorian state government law banning "subversive" gatherings. Dozens of members of the Unemployed Workers Movement were arrested, and unemployed meetings at the intersection of Phoenix Street and Sydney Road, Brunswick were dispersed by police. As part of this fight, a young Counihan addressed a crowd from a locked cage on top a truck. Police had to cut him out, to the jeers of the crowd, as he continued speaking.
From 1934 Counihan worked as a cartoonist for various publications, including The Bulletin and the Communist Party's paper, the Guardian from 1945 to 1949 and again from 1952 to 1958. He spent extended periods in hospital with tuberculosis during the Second World War. With the encouragement of the artist Yosl Bergner, he began to paint. He developed a personal style based on the social realist approach, producing compassionate images of workers and their working lives. Counihan maintained that the artist had a duty to "gather information from the political developments of the time."
Counihan remained loyal to the Communist Party during its various splits and despite its declining support in the 1970s and '80s. He died in Melbourne aged 73. The Counihan Gallery, managed by City of Moreland Council, is named in his honour. His painting "Tete", donated by the De Fazio familiy was unveiled in 2003 and is on permanent display in the foyer. A short distance away, outside the Brunswick Mechanics Institute on Sydney Road, a Free Speech memorial has been built to commemorate the free speech fights by the unemployed in 1933 and Noel Counihan's part in them.
