I’ve just finished reading Chris Roynane’s biography of Rudi Gopas. It was a good book in that it was ‘enlightening’ but oddly written. Gopas was a painting tutor/lecturer a…
Rita Angus painted several experimental works in 1953, including one of her few abstract images – Landscape with sea . As the title suggests, this painting was inspired by the world around her. Composer and friend Douglas Lilburn was...
Rita Angus painted Poplar trees when she was just 21. The work was her most advanced to that point. In it, Angus shows a keen awareness of modern art, reducing the landscape to simple shapes and colours, bold outlines, and lively patterns. Poplar...
In 1940, Douglas Angus arrived in Christchurch for a rowing tournament. To his disappointment, he was to be billeted with his big sister Rita. His attitude, however, soon changed: ‘I suddenly saw walking up the platform this most striking person,...
Rita Angus and her neighbour Lawrence Baigent had much in common beyond their friendship with Leo Bensemann. Both loved poetry, literature, and music, and both were pacifists. Angus painted this portrait of Baigent in the late 1930s. She added the...
