Art History, NZ, page 9

Throughout the 1960's abstract art gained acceptance.

The forms used by Walters ..

.. by Mrkusich (below), and by Peebles and Hotere grew more severe.

David Graham and Ray Thorburn tempered their abstractions with Pop-art element.

Don Driver often inserted images akin to Pop-art while John Drawbridge and Ross Ritchie moved with ease between the abstract and the figurative.

Phillip Trusttum's (image above) expressionistic abstractions contained semi-recognisable images while the "City" series became flatter and more abstract. Both Gretchen Albrecht and Geoff Thornley abandoned their expressive figure painting for semi-geometric abstraction.

---

Patrick Hanley (image below), returning from Europe, brought back a new attitude to figurative painting, best illustrated in his "Figures of Light" series, in 1964.

Don Binney created a semi-symbolic regionalism with his paintings of birds, as shown, image below.
A similar regionalism appeared with Michael Smither and Robin White.

By the 1970's the realism apparent in their work became more assertive in the paintings of Brent Wong (below), Grahame Sydney, Peter Siddell and Glenda Randerson.

---

At the same time, an expressionistic type of figure painting was practised by Tony Fomison, Phillip Clairmont, and Jeffrey Harris.

John Lethbridge and Denys Watkins (image below), in their figure paintings, allude to ideas and have extended such ideas into less easily defined art forms.

Likewise Rick Killeen developed his flat, cut-out images to be arranged and hung on the wall.

next page

back

---

www.zealand.org.nz