 The rock art of Australia 's Indigenous peoples is the oldest and richest in the world , dating as far back as 60 @,@ 000 years and spread across hundreds of thousands of sites . Traditional designs , patterns and stories infuse contemporary Indigenous Australian art , " the last great art movement of the 20th century " ; its exponents include Emily Kame Kngwarreye . During the first century of European settlement , colonial artists , trained in Europe , showed a fascination with the unfamiliar land . The naturalistic , sun @-@ filled works of Arthur Streeton , Tom Roberts and others associated with the 19th @-@ century Heidelberg School — the first " distinctively Australian " movement in Western art — gave expression to a burgeoning Australian nationalism in the lead @-@ up to Federation . While the school remained influential into the new century , modernists such as Margaret Preston , and , later , Sidney Nolan and Arthur Boyd , explored new artistic trends . The landscape remained a central subject matter for Fred Williams , Brett Whiteley and other post @-@ World War II artists whose works , eclectic in style yet uniquely Australian , moved between the figurative and the abstract . The National Gallery of Australia and state galleries maintain collections of Australian and international art . Australia has one of the world 's highest attendances of art galleries and museums per head of population . 
