King of the beasts is an ambitious collaborative painting by George Gittoes and Nunelucio Alvarado, bearing strong hallmarks of each artist’s painterly style. Sharing a deep commitment to expressing humanitarian issues through innovative forms of social realism, the two artists first met in 1989, when Gittoes spent several months in the Philippines. After visiting Brisbane for the first APT in 1993, Alvarado stayed with the Gittoes family for several months in Bundeena, near Sydney.

King of the beasts was produced as part of a performance piece at Canberra Contemporary Art Space — the two artists painted while actor Charles Freyberg presented a monologue. They worked without sketches, allowing themselves a timeframe of 90 minutes, but completing the piece in just 75, with the later addition of some detail. The work depicts a family threatened by the monsters of war, hunger and greed. It features a lion, a concrete soldier and a Somali Buddha painted by Gittoes, with Alvarado contributing a peasant family and the encompassing snake, its pattern based on the US flag.