Angry Penguins

Cover of the December 1945 issue of Angry Penguins, designed by Albert Tucker

Angry Penguins was an art and literary journal founded in 1940 by surrealist poet Max Harris. Originally based in Adelaide, the journal moved to Melbourne in 1942 once Harris joined the Heide Circle, a group of modernist painters and writers who stayed at Heide, a property owned by art patrons John and Sunday Reed. Angry Penguins subsequently became associated with, and stimulated, an art movement now known by the same name. The Angry Penguins sought to introduce avant-garde ideas into Australian art and literature, and position Australia within a broader international modernism. Key figures of the movement include Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd, Joy Hester and Albert Tucker.

In 1944, Angry Penguins became the subject of a famous literary hoax perpetrated by anti-modernist poets James McAuley and Harold Stewart. The journal ceased publication two years later.