John Olsen was born in 1928. He studied at the Julian Ashton School, the Orban School, in Paris and completed independent study in Spain.

He gained his first official success in Melbourne when a small painting was bought for the National Gallery of Victoria from the Herald Outdoor Art Show . By 1957 the Sydney critic Paul Haefliger had recognized his potential and private subscribers raised a fund to send Olsen abroad. He sent exhibition to Sydney and Melbourne and returned after three years to introduce expressionistic type of painting reflecting the combined influences of the Dutch painter Corneille and the Scots painter Alan Davie. The first impact of this work was felt when, with other young Sydney painters, Olsen took part in the Sydney Nine inaugural exhibition to introduce to the vocabulary of Australian art a new title, You Beaut Country . This title was crucial to his subsequent success. European influences in his work were fused to produce individual child-art type imagery expressed with a sophistication and panache, added to which was a strong, natural feeling for his Australian environment. A wandering, child-like scrawl of linear superstructure was imposed on a rich, free, colourful scumble of under-painting of alternating opaque and transparent passages.

His work was represented in the Bicentennial exhibition The Great Australian Art Exhibition and a major retrospective of his work was curated by the National Gallery of Victoria and toured to other state galleries 1991-92.