Sam Atyeo

Samuel Laurence Atyeo (6 January 1910 – 26 May 1990) was an Australian painter, designer and diplomat. Atyeo was active in Melbourne's modernist movement in the 1930s and was associated with the Heide circle. He later had a diplomatic career working under Herbert Evatt, and was noted for his unconventional approach to the work. He gave up both artistic and diplomatic work in the 1950s and spent the rest of his life farming in France with occasional returns to painting. Atyeo's art and design work made a considerable contribution to modernism in Australia, and his painting "Organised Line to Yellow" is considered Australia's first abstract painting.