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Paris-born Louise Henderson was one of the first Aotearoa New Zealand artists to address abstraction, and became interested in architectural forms during her two years living in the Middle East from 1956–58. Made after a visit to Britain, The Farmhouse in Cornwall shows her use of built structures as a starting point for generating complex and dynamic compositions. Here, an arrangement of hard-edged forms in earthy, subdued tones deftly leads the eye, never completely allowing it to rest in one place.

(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )

At a time in her career when many might have expected her to slow down or even retire, French-born Louise Henderson embarked upon one of her most ambitious creative projects. The Twelve Months distilled her impressions of her life in Aotearoa New Zealand into a dozen tall canvases, filtering the rhythms of the year through her ‘abstract poetic of nature’. Borrowing their proportions from the elegant ‘double square’ of her studio windows, they combined two important aspects of her practice: the all-seeing viewpoints and organisational principles of cubism and the ability to use colour to evoke both form and atmosphere. Often inspired by the view through her window, Henderson manipulated a complex set of variables, considering how the seasons affected the weather and landscape, the changing light and position of the sun, and the fluctuating activities, rituals and moods of people in both the city and the countryside.

In the ‘winter’ months, June and July, Henderson skilfully balanced colour, form and movement to evoke rain-laden clouds, drenched fields and cold, boisterous winds.

At a time in her career when many might have expected her to slow down or even retire, French-born Louise Henderson embarked upon one of her most ambitious creative projects. The Twelve Months distilled her impressions of her life in Aotearoa New Zealand into a dozen tall canvases, filtering the rhythms of the year through her ‘abstract poetic of nature’. Borrowing their proportions from the elegant ‘double square’ of her studio windows, they combined two important aspects of her practice: the all-seeing viewpoints and organisational principles of cubism and the ability to use colour to evoke both form and atmosphere. Often inspired by the view through her window, Henderson manipulated a complex set of variables, considering how the seasons affected the weather and landscape, the changing light and position of the sun, and the fluctuating activities, rituals and moods of people in both the city and the countryside.

In the ‘winter’ months, June and July, Henderson skilfully balanced colour, form and movement to evoke rain-laden clouds, drenched fields and cold, boisterous winds.

This print is from the folio L’Art Décoratif Théâtral Moderne (Modern Theatrical Decorative Art) produced in Paris in 1919 by leading European avant-garde artists Natal’ya Goncharova (1881–1962) and Mikhail Larionov (1881–1964). Including examples of the artists’ work in lithography and pochoir (stencil) printing, the folio highlights not only their interest in stage and costume design, but also their desire to combine the forms of cubism with the representation of movement. In 1912 Larionov initiated rayonism, an artistic genre in which he investigated the effect of light rays fracturing and reflecting off the surface of objects. The prints included in L’Art Décoratif Théâtral Moderne, with their rich decorative patterns, vibrant colours and abstract forms, highlight these concerns.

Goncharova and Larionov first met in 1898 as students at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and remained lifelong companions. Both artists were founding members of leading Russian avant-garde movements, including the Donkey’s Tail (1912), and worked with the renowned founder of Ballets Russes, Serge Diaghilev (1872–1929), from 1914. In 1919 they relocated to Paris, where they became prominent figures in the city’s artistic, dance and literary circles. Today they are widely regarded as the foremost Russian artists of the twentieth century.

L’Art Décoratif Théâtral Moderne was presented to the Gallery by Anita Muling in 1979.

Frances Hodgkins was seventy-seven years old when she painted Zipp in 1945, nearing the end of her career and life. It is one of the last paintings she completed. With its semiabstract shapes and forms set against a despairingly dark background, Zipp highlights how Frances continued to push herself as an artist even through her later years.

Seemingly random objects emerge through the gloom; some distinguisable, others abstracted beyond recognition: belts, a zip, a shoe and some clothing. These personal items belonging to the artist serve not only as a still life, but also as a kind of self-portrait. Most telling is the way they are scattered and heaped in a rumpled pile, perhaps symbolising the disorder in her life at this time.

(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )

Lois White was a prominent, individualistic voice in New Zealand painting in the 1930s and 1940s, who attracted attention with her modernistic, art-deco style figure compositions.

A student at Elam School of Fine of Arts in Auckland in the 1920s, White also taught there for many years from 1928. Equally interested in the old masters as in the cubists and other modern painters, she admitted looking at “anything that I could get my eyes and brain working on […] I was very taken with all the figure compositions of Botticelli.”

Such varied sources are evident in her dramatic depiction of Adam and Eve, the first humans in the biblical account of the creation of the world. Painted at the start of World War II, it may be seen as an allegorical reflection on the human condition. (In Modern Times, 18 December 2015 – 11 September 2016)

Ted Bracey painted this jazzily modernistic work while in his final diploma year in 1959 at the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts. Echoing the early analytical cubist paintings of Georges Braque, it also shows the influence of Paul Klee and Lyonel Feininger, all of whom Bracey had studied, even if only through reproductions. The ongoing possibilities of cubism were also being drawn out at this time by his peers and more established New Zealand painters including Louise Henderson and Colin McCahon.

Bracey, then twenty-three, exhibited this work in the 1959 Group exhibition, after which it nearly became the first purely abstract painting to enter the city’s art collection. Its modernity, however, proved a stumbling block when city councillors controversially overruled the Gallery’s art advisory committee recommendation to buy it. The painting was purchased directly from Bracey in 2002, shortly after his retirement as head of the School of Fine Arts. (In Modern Times, 18 December 2015 – 11 September 2016)

This print is from the folio L’Art Décoratif Théâtral Moderne (Modern Theatrical Decorative Art) produced in Paris in 1919 by leading European avant-garde artists Natal’ya Goncharova (1881–1962) and Mikhail Larionov (1881–1964). Including examples of the artists’ work in lithography and pochoir (stencil) printing, the folio highlights not only their interest in stage and costume design, but also their desire to combine the forms of cubism with the representation of movement. In 1912 Larionov initiated rayonism, an artistic genre in which he investigated the effect of light rays fracturing and reflecting off the surface of objects. The prints included in L’Art Décoratif Théâtral Moderne, with their rich decorative patterns, vibrant colours and abstract forms, highlight these concerns.

Goncharova and Larionov first met in 1898 as students at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and remained lifelong companions. Both artists were founding members of leading Russian avant-garde movements, including the Donkey’s Tail (1912), and worked with the renowned founder of Ballets Russes, Serge Diaghilev (1872–1929), from 1914. In 1919 they relocated to Paris, where they became prominent figures in the city’s artistic, dance and literary circles. Today they are widely regarded as the foremost Russian artists of the twentieth century.

L’Art Décoratif Théâtral Moderne was presented to the Gallery by Anita Muling in 1979.

“I am very interested in the new movement as all artists must be,” declared the Dunedin-born, Paris-based Frances Hodgkins to a Sydney reporter in 1913, when questioned about the latest developments in European art. To an Adelaide reporter she mused: “What the final result will be I cannot say. The futurists think it will end in pure abstraction, but that is so far ahead that one cannot view it with anything like seriousness.”

By the 1930s Hodgkins was herself riding the wave of modernism: while she had maintained a flexible grip on figurative representation throughout her career, her work had become increasingly abstract. This dynamic, cubist-inspired composition in gouache, a thick opaque paint, is believed to have been painted in Tossa de Mar, an ancient fishing village on the Costa Brava in Spain, where she set up a studio for several months in 1935. By this time, Hodgkins’ home base was in England, where she had established a significant reputation. (In Modern Times, 18 December 2015 – 11 September 2016)

The well-known New Zealand expatriate artist Frances Hodgkins travelled to Ibiza in October 1932, remaining on the island until July 1933. These were high times for the artist, who relished living and painting in the island’s sharp light immensely. Hodgkins kept company with fellow New Zealand painters Maude Burge, Gwen Knight and May Smith, whom she fondly referred to as “my three friends”. At this time Hodgkins painted still-life subjects out in the landscape as opposed to indoors. Everyday objects were often arranged on a table, or sometimes directly on the ground, with the Ibiza landscape extending into the distance beyond. She commented at the time, “In this clear ivory light every common object looks important and significant … things appear in stark simplicity minus all detail – nothing corked up … or hidden as in the grey, or brown, light of the north.”

(New Dawn fades, November 2018)

A keen gardener, Rita Angus painted flower studies throughout her career. During the 1940s in particular she painted some very elegant and botanically exact works such as Irises. Her flower studies allude to the symbolic meanings of flowers, a common feature of Medieval and Renaissance art. She often included flowers in her portraits to represent their associated meanings. The iris stands for faith, wisdom and hope. Angus was born in Hastings. She studied at the Canterbury College School of Art from 1927 to 1933. In 1930 she married Canterbury artist Alfred Cook and, although they separated in 1934, she signed her work ‘Rita Cook’ until 1941. She lived and worked in Christchurch until 1955 when she moved to Wellington. In 1958 Angus was awarded an Association of New Zealand Art Societies Fellowship, which allowed her to visit England and Europe.

Zina Swanson’s precise, yet poetic painted drawings call attention to the delicacy and vulnerability of nature. Plant matter, insects and other tiny objects she collected over several years take fresh life in brushstrokes that range from feathery to forensically precise. Zina’s interest in her personal – and our human – relationship with the natural world led her to imagine a strange form of cross-species rehabilitation, where wilting forms are supported, a cutting grows the feet of a bird and processed timber receives new prosthetic roots. Her latest painting recounts an early foray into collecting, when she salvaged a discarded stick so large it had to be cut into three and reassembled in her studio. In an associated poem, she wrote: Making them part of my life, by making them part of my paintings Making a special shelf for them in my studio The collection keeps growing.

(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )

This print is from the folio L’Art Décoratif Théâtral Moderne (Modern Theatrical Decorative Art) produced in Paris in 1919 by leading European avant-garde artists Natal’ya Goncharova (1881–1962) and Mikhail Larionov (1881–1964). Including examples of the artists’ work in lithography and pochoir (stencil) printing, the folio highlights not only their interest in stage and costume design, but also their desire to combine the forms of cubism with the representation of movement. In 1912 Larionov initiated rayonism, an artistic genre in which he investigated the effect of light rays fracturing and reflecting off the surface of objects. The prints included in L’Art Décoratif Théâtral Moderne, with their rich decorative patterns, vibrant colours and abstract forms, highlight these concerns.

Goncharova and Larionov first met in 1898 as students at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and remained lifelong companions. Both artists were founding members of leading Russian avant-garde movements, including the Donkey’s Tail (1912), and worked with the renowned founder of Ballets Russes, Serge Diaghilev (1872–1929), from 1914. In 1919 they relocated to Paris, where they became prominent figures in the city’s artistic, dance and literary circles. Today they are widely regarded as the foremost Russian artists of the twentieth century.

L’Art Décoratif Théâtral Moderne was presented to the Gallery by Anita Muling in 1979.

Zina Swanson’s precise, yet poetic painted drawings call attention to the delicacy and vulnerability of nature. Plant matter, insects and other tiny objects she collected over several years take fresh life in brushstrokes that range from feathery to forensically precise. Zina’s interest in her personal – and our human – relationship with the natural world led her to imagine a strange form of cross-species rehabilitation, where wilting forms are supported, a cutting grows the feet of a bird and processed timber receives new prosthetic roots. Her latest painting recounts an early foray into collecting, when she salvaged a discarded stick so large it had to be cut into three and reassembled in her studio. In an associated poem, she wrote: Making them part of my life, by making them part of my paintings Making a special shelf for them in my studio The collection keeps growing.

(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )

This work is from the Canterbury Public Library’s collection of original art works. This collection was started by Ron O’Reilly (1914-1982), who was appointed City Librarian in 1951. He had a keen interest in philosophy, literature and New Zealand art and developed personal friendships with many artists including Doris Lusk, Olivia Spencer Bower, Colin McCahon and Toss Woollaston. During his time in Christchurch he was deeply involved in the local art scene. He arranged many exhibitions in the library one such being McCahon’s The Wake in 1959. He liaised with other galleries in arranging the loans of paintings for other exhibitions, and for a period was art critic for the Press and picture buyer for the CSA Gallery. In 1953 the Library started its hire service of framed art prints, a selection of 80 reproductions which was confined to works by artists of importance in the history of painting, both old and modern masters. Shortly afterwards the Library’s collection was augmented by two substantial gifts, one from the Redfern Gallery, London of 34 original lithographs by British artists and the other, 39 prints from French cultural funds. In 1955 the City Council approved extension of the picture loan service to include original art works by local artists. The maximum purchase price was to be 19 guineas and because of this limitation the artists were often persuaded to sell their work at reduced prices. The prospect of having one’ s work on such public display was also an inducement to the artist to sell at a reasonable price. By 1960, 50 original works had been acquired. The paintings were selected by Ron O’Reilly at exhibitions, galleries and by visiting the artists in their homes.

In 1981, when purchasing ceased, the collection consisted of 297 works. 155 of these were gifted to the Robert McDougall Art Gallery in 2001. Adapted from “Library Treasures: New Zealand art works from the collection of the Canterbury Public Library, exhibited at the CSA Gallery, 9 February to 5 March 1989”.

By 1937 Frances Hodgkins had established herself as a major artist in Britain. During this period she began using gouache, which became one of her favoured mediums in the final years of her career.

This work highlights the experimental quality that gouache offered her at this time. Using an almost calligraphic technique, the paint has been applied freely and expressively using a variety of brush marks.

Hodgkins was born in Dunedin and was initially trained by her father, part-time watercolourist William Matthew Hodgkins. In 1893 she took classes with G. P. Nerli, and in 1895/96 studied at the Dunedin School of Art. Hodgkins left to study at the London Polytechnic in 1901 and in 1903 she exhibited at the Royal Academy, becoming the first New Zealander to have the honour of being ‘hung on the line’. Living in Paris between 1908 and 1912, Hodgkins taught at the Académie Colarossi, where she was the first woman on staff. She eventually settled in England, where she exhibited with many art groups and galleries, including the Lefevre Galleries in London from 1932.

“You say in yr last [letter] that I will not tag on to Colonial life after staying away so long – you surely don’t expect & want me to settle down into a Maiden Aunt do you & throw up career & ambition & lose the precious ground I have gained – you are much too dear and unselfish for that I am sure. I am coming out merely to see you & Sis & the children, to be with you for a while & then to return to my work like any man of business. To make you happy I must be happy myself. I want to see you badly & feel I must come soon at no matter what sacrifice. But do realise Mother that it’s on this side of the world that my work and future career lie. I grieve sometimes that you do not understand this more.” —Frances Hodgkins, excerpt from a letter to her mother, Rachel Hodgkins, 1911

(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )

“I live out my own world & follow in the lives of Frances Hodgkins […] and other women painters”, wrote Rita Angus. One of these other painters was fellow Waitaha Canterbury artist Margaret Stoddart. Both Rita and Margaret developed a deep appreciation of botanical subjects in their practices, alongside their work as landscape painters. Their approach to watercolour couldn’t be more different, however: Margaret with her lively impressionistic approach contrasts with Rita’s accuracy and detail usually reserved for a botanical artist illustrating a scientific journal.

(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )

Adelaide-born Dorrit Black was at the forefront of bringing modern art to Australia after returning from Europe in 1929. This lively, cubist-inspired linocut shows the impact of her European studies, which included three months in 1927 at the Grosvenor School of Art in London with printmaker Claude Flight, and classes in Paris with the cubist painters André Lhote and Albert Gleizes from 1927–28.

Black was based in Sydney from 1930. Her first solo exhibition that year included Australia’s first cubist landscape painting, The Bridge, portraying the Sydney Harbour Bridge being constructed. In 1931, she opened the Modern Art Centre in Sydney, and became the first woman to establish a gallery in Australia. Black returned to Adelaide in 1935, and remained influential, including through her teaching at the South Australian School of Art.

(In Modern Times, 18 December 2015 – 11 September 2016)

John Weeks was regarded as New Zealand's leading exponent of modern painting for a considerable period. A teacher at the Elam School of Fine Arts in Auckland from 1930–54 he played an important role in connecting younger artists to the major developments in modern art of the early twentieth century. His reputation was enhanced by having studied and worked abroad for many years.

An ambulance medical corps officer in Britain and France during World War I, he studied art in Edinburgh from 1923, then in Paris at the studio of the cubist painter André Lhote from 1925, where he returned in 1928 after extended painting sojourns in Italy, North Africa and the South of France. (In Modern Times, 18 December 2015 – 11 September 2016)

Two prints from early in Eileen Mayo’s career show the strength of her natural ability. Eileen was nineteen and studying at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London, when she made the wood engraving Skaters. She made Turkish Bath a few years later in response to an invitation to put work in the Second Exhibition of British Lino-Cuts at the Redfern Gallery, London. Her invitation came from Claude Flight, the linocut’s principal champion, who reportedly instructed her on the technique over the telephone. She had met Flight, a teacher at the Grosvenor School of Art, while working there in 1929 as a life-class model.

(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )

The Auckland painter John Weeks returned to New Zealand in 1929 after seven years abroad, having painted and travelled in Europe and North Africa, and studied in the Paris studio of the cubist painter André Lhote.

Appointed as a teacher at the Elam School of Fine Arts in 1930, Weeks found New Zealand a virtual clean slate in relation to modern art, for which he became a pragmatic, steadfast champion. Versatile in his output, he painted mildly abstracted landscapes and figure studies that recalled the lessons of Paul Cézanne. From about 1945 onwards, he also began exhibiting more boldly abstract compositions such as these, echoing the earliest years of cubism and the paintings of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque.

(In Modern Times, 18 December 2015 – 11 September 2016)

Frank Weitzel grew up in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, and studied overseas in San Francisco and Munich before settling in Sydney in 1928 where he became part of the city’s burgeoning modern art scene. His close associations with the printmakers Thea Procter and Dorrit Black led to his interest in the linocut, and he became part of the progressive Group of Seven artists. Frank relocated to London in 1930, where he was invited by Claude Flight to exhibit with the British linocut artists at the Redfern Gallery in 1930 and 1931 – including the works displayed here. Claude wrote to Dorrit Black regarding Frank’s linocuts that he was “very pleased to have Mr Weitzel’s work for the show. I like it very much, it’s original, strong, good of its kind & just the sort of work we want.” With a bright future ahead of him, Frank died tragically young at just twenty-six years of age.

Ink on Paper: Aotearoa New Zealand Printmakers of the Modern Era, 11 February – 28 May 2023

The American-born artist Lyonel Feininger had been living in Europe, mainly in Germany, since 1887. He visited Paris in 1911 while exhibiting work at the Salon des Indépendents, where the cubists were exhibiting their discoveries for the first time. Writing to a friend in 1913 from Berlin, Feininger described the moment: “In that Spring I had gone to Paris for two weeks and found the art world agog with Cubism – a thing I had never heard even mentioned before, but which I had already, entirely intuitively, striven after for years.”

Feininger’s artistic development from this point led to an invitation in 1919 from the German architect Walter Gropius to become the first master at the Bauhaus,a new school of art at Weimar. He produced many woodblock prints for their publications, including a futurist-inspired cover for their first manifesto, featuring a cathedral in a forest, a theme to which he often returned. (In Modern Times, 18 December 2015 – 11 September 2016)

Zina Swanson’s precise, yet poetic painted drawings call attention to the delicacy and vulnerability of nature. Plant matter, insects and other tiny objects she collected over several years take fresh life in brushstrokes that range from feathery to forensically precise. Zina’s interest in her personal – and our human – relationship with the natural world led her to imagine a strange form of cross-species rehabilitation, where wilting forms are supported, a cutting grows the feet of a bird and processed timber receives new prosthetic roots. Her latest painting recounts an early foray into collecting, when she salvaged a discarded stick so large it had to be cut into three and reassembled in her studio. In an associated poem, she wrote: Making them part of my life, by making them part of my paintings Making a special shelf for them in my studio The collection keeps growing.

(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )

Zina Swanson’s precise, yet poetic painted drawings call attention to the delicacy and vulnerability of nature. Plant matter, insects and other tiny objects she collected over several years take fresh life in brushstrokes that range from feathery to forensically precise. Zina’s interest in her personal – and our human – relationship with the natural world led her to imagine a strange form of cross-species rehabilitation, where wilting forms are supported, a cutting grows the feet of a bird and processed timber receives new prosthetic roots. Her latest painting recounts an early foray into collecting, when she salvaged a discarded stick so large it had to be cut into three and reassembled in her studio. In an associated poem, she wrote: Making them part of my life, by making them part of my paintings Making a special shelf for them in my studio The collection keeps growing.

(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )

Rita Angus painted many still life subjects in watercolour, often focusing on flowers and potted plants. Her interest in simplifying forms into geometric planes shows the influence of the French artist Paul Cézanne, for whom elements of design and composition were paramount. Typically, Angus has handled the washes of colour with great skill, layering them to produce subtle differences in tone. She has incorporated landscape elements of a bay and headland in the background, (probably Wellington Harbour) effectively offsetting the pot plants, giving the composition a real sense of depth. Angus was born in Hastings. In 1927 she began studies at the Canterbury College School of Art until 1933. She then worked as an illustrator for the Christchurch Press Junior. By 1955 she had settled in Wellington and in 1958 was awarded an Association of New Zealand Art Societies Fellowship, which allowed her to travel to England and Europe. There she studied old masters as well as contemporary art. She died in Wellington.

The village church theme was a favourite of Lyonel Feininger’s and dates from his earliest cubist printmaking. The Yellow Church 3 was printed in an edition of 130. Feininger always had an interest in architecture and he worked in a cubist style, which suited his sharp edged architectural themes. Born in New York, in 1887 Feininger was sent to study music in Germany. He very soon changed to study drawing at the Akademie der Kunste in Berlin and the Académie Colarossi, Paris. In the mid-1890s Feininger returned to Berlin, where he became a prominent illustrator for German satirical magazines. He later turned to painting and in 1919 was appointed the first master of the Bauhaus, the new School of Art of the Weimar Republic. Feininger contributed woodblock prints to Bauhaus publications, including the cover for the first manifesto. In 1937 he left Germany for the United States, eventually settling in New York. Late in his career Feininger was elected president of the Federation of American Painters and Sculptors.