Rita Angus

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Rita Angus

Rita Angus , nee Henrietta Catherine Angus , later officially Henrietta Catherine McKenzie , pseudonym Rita Cook , (born March 12, 1908 in Hastings , New Zealand , † January 25, 1970 in Wellington , New Zealand) was a New Zealand painter. From the 1960s onwards, she was one of the most important players in New Zealand art, and was regarded as a pioneer of modern painting in New Zealand.

Early years

Henrietta Catherine Angus was born on March 12, 1908, as the eldest child of the married couple Ethel Violet Crabtree and William McKenzie Angus in Hastings , New Zealand. She had six siblings. Her father, a trained carpenter, later opened a construction company, WM Angus Limited . Shortly after Henrietta's birth, the family moved to Palmerston North . Henrietta grew up there and later attended two primary schools , one in Palmerston North and one in Napier , depending on where her father was working. At the age of 14 she moved to Girls' High School in Palmerston North , where she stayed until 1926 and was promoted by her art teacher. In February 1927 she enrolled in the Canterbury College School of Art in Christchurch , where she studied painting and art history with an interruption until 1933, but never graduated with a diploma.

Life as a painter

Her first recognized work was a self-portrait from 1929, followed by a natural landscape a year later. On June 13, 1930 she married the artist colleague Alfred Herbert Owen Cook in Christchurch and in the same year began exhibiting her works for the first time with the Canterbury Society of Arts under the stage name Rita Cook . A year later she worked with Cook in Napier and processed the impressions of the Hawke's Bay earthquake of 1931 , which at the time had almost completely destroyed the city center of Napier . In 1932 an exhibition with The Group , an informal artists' association from Christchurch, followed .

Angus separated from her husband in 1934 and divorced in 1939. The separation put Angus financially and socially in a difficult position. She lived off short-term jobs for years right into the 1940s, earned herself a job as a teacher and at times as an illustrator for a newspaper. But she was by no means idle in matters of painting and in her self-discovery as a woman and artist. Her best-known works were created until the late 1930s, and with a look back at this time, she is said to have written that "her feminist view is a normal development of a woman".

After separating from her husband, Angus took the name Rita Mackenzie , her grandmother's maiden name, but continued to sign her pictures with Rita Cook . She used the signature until 1946, but also sometimes used the signature R. McKenzie or R. Mackenzie from 1941 after she had changed her name to Henrietta Catherine McKenzie by means of a name change certificate . Later she signed exclusively with the name Rita Angus , under which she later became known nationwide.

With the beginning of World War II , Angus took pacifist positions, refused to work that could be linked to acts of war and worked on a tobacco plantation near Pangatotara , west of Nelson . Some of her works were created during this time and show her pacifist attitude.

In 1948 she stopped painting due to illness and had to seek psychiatric treatment a year later. In 1951 she came back to Christchurch and primarily occupied herself with landscape painting in the Otago region , but moved to Wellington in 1955, where she settled in the Thorndon district. In 1957 she had her first own exhibition in Wellington and a year later the Association of New Zealand Art Societies gave her the opportunity to study art in England and Europe . Back in New Zealand, she worked on various projects, with wall painting in the Girls' High School in Napier being one of her most unusual jobs.

In November 1869 she had to be hospitalized in Wellington for cancer and died on January 25, 1970.

Exhibition of their works

  • 1930 - Canterbury Society of Arts, Christchurch
  • 1932 - The Group, Christchurch
  • 1940 - National Centennial Exhibition of New Zealand Art, Dunedin (February 19, 1940)
  • 1957 - Her first own exhibition at the Art Center Gallery in Wellington (more followed in 1961, 1963, 1964 and 1967)
  • 1965 - Commonwealth Institute, London (Title: Contemporary Painting in New Zealand )
  • 1969 - Smithsonian Institution , Washington, DC , (Title: New Zealand Modern Art )
  • 1982 - The National Art Gallery, Wellington (from 1982 to 1983)
  • 2008 - Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa , Wellington , (Title: Rita Angus - Live & Vision ) Exhibition with 200 works for her 100th birthday (can still be viewed online). The exhibition then went on tour through New Zealand and was shown with over 140 works from March 5, 2009 to July 5, 2009 in Christchurch . The exhibition can still be viewed online.

literature

  • Jill Trevelyan : Rita Angus: An Artist's Life . Te Papa Press , Wellington 2008, ISBN 978-1-877385-39-1 (English).
  • Jill Trevelyan, William McAloon : Rita Angus: Life And Vision . Te Papa Press , Wellington 2008, ISBN 978-1-877385-35-3 (English, catalog for the exhibition in the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa).

Web links

Video contributions

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Rita Angus - Biography . New Zealand History , August 19, 2014, accessed January 13, 2015 .
  2. ↑ Self-portrait . Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa , accessed January 13, 2015 (English, self-portrait in oil on canvas, 470 x 380 mm format).
  3. ^ The Group Catalogs, 1927-1977 . Christchurch City Libraries , accessed January 13, 2015 .
  4. ↑ Early years 1929-39 . Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa , accessed January 13, 2015 .
  5. ↑ Pacifism and the goddesses 1944-53 . Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa , accessed January 13, 2015 .
  6. ^ Rita Angus - Cass . (PDF (132 kB)) Christchurch Art Gallery , archived from the original on January 14, 2015 ; accessed on May 10, 2019 (English, original website no longer available).
  7. ^ Rita Angus, 1908-1970 . Christchurch City Libraries , accessed January 13, 2015 .
  8. ^ Roger Blackley : Centennial Exhibitions of Art . In: Victoria University Press (Ed.): Creating a National Spirit: Celebrating New Zealand's Centennial . Wellington 2004, p.  222–228 (English, online [accessed January 15, 2015]).
  9. ^ Rita Angus - Live & Vision . Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa , accessed January 15, 2015 .
  10. ^ Rita Angus - Live & Vision . Christchurch Art Gallery , accessed January 15, 2015 .
personal data
SURNAME Angus, Rita
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Angus, Henrietta Catherine (maiden name); McKenzie, Henrietta Catherine; Cook, Rita (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION New Zealand painter
DATE OF BIRTH March 12, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Hastings , New Zealand
DATE OF DEATH January 25, 1970
Place of death Wellington , New Zealand