Y.J. Thuring

At the ’43 Group’s first exhibition in November 1943, a pupil of Justin Daraniyagala hung two paintings, ‘Yellow Snake’ and ‘Lovers’, and went no further with the Group. Y.J. Thuring, whose given name was Yolvin, was an invited exhibitor at the inauguration rather than a member of the Group, and he did not continue the association after that first show.

His later life took him abroad. He emigrated to Australia in 1970 and held a one-man exhibition at the Victorian Artists Society galleries on Albert Street, East Melbourne, in 1973. He belongs among the newcomers the Group drew in at its very beginning, a reminder that the first exhibition of 1943 was wider than the handful of names that later became famous.

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Sources

1. Weereratne, Neville. 43 Group: A Chronicle of Fifty Years in the Art of Sri Lanka. Melbourne: Lantana, 1993.
2. Weereratne, Neville. ‘Once and Future Artists’. The 43 Group. https://www.43group.org/chapters/chapter-14-once-and-future-artists