49
GORDON WALTERS - Untitled, 1982
Estimate:
$450,000 - $550,000
Passed
Live Auction
IMPORTANT & RARE ART
ARTIST
GORDON WALTERS (1919 - 95)
Size
62 x 183.5 cm
Description
Acrylic on canvas
Condition
To request a condition report, please contact us at auctions@artcntr.co.nz or phone +64 9 379 4010
Signature
Signed & dated '82 verso
Provenance
Private collection, Auckland Collection of Ian Scott (1945 - 2013)
Acquired from ARTIS Gallery, Auckland, August 1985
Acquired from ARTIS Gallery, Auckland, August 1985
Literature
Gordon Walters is acknowledged as one of New Zealand’s most distinctive and significant artists and his rigorous and refined painting represent a high point in New Zealand art. Walter’s art was based on an exploration of the dynamic relationships between a limited set of elements derived from a wide yet selective range of sources. This visual enquiry expanded outwards connecting art forms and theories from Europe, Australia, the Americas and the Pacific. The results were an artistic practice that was globally connected, yet centered around the artist’s response to his immediate environment.
In 1947 Walters visited Theo Schoon in South Canterbury where Schoon was recording Maori rock drawings. It was one of many occasions on which Walters drew inspiration from traditional Maori art. When he travelled to Europe in 1950, Walters realised that modern art had learned important lessons from the arts of the Pacific. Soon after, he began working with the koru, or fern bud, motif – a Maori decorative form used on rafter paintings, incised gourds and in tattooing. In the extraordinary series of abstract paintings that resulted, this simple form expresses a vast range of dynamic relationships.
Merging the geometry of modernist abstract painting with the unfurling fern motif from Maori art, Walters' koru paintings are meditations on the theme of exchange – the way forms and ideas move from one place to another and change along the way.
In the 1980s Walters’ work reached a new level of refinement, which explored the potential of shapes that overlap each other. Refining the tenor of his painting, brushstrokes became virtually invisible, the colours more subtle and softly muted, and the surfaces rendered with total precision. Walters was in the habit of returning to his ‘back catalogue’ of early studies and source material for inspiration and many of the ideas for these late works are nascent in the 1950s gouache paintings.
The work included in this sale, Untitled, 1982,, illustrates Walters' experimentation with a landscape format. The delicately modulated colour draws the eye in, highlighting Walters' superb mastery of his medium.
In 1947 Walters visited Theo Schoon in South Canterbury where Schoon was recording Maori rock drawings. It was one of many occasions on which Walters drew inspiration from traditional Maori art. When he travelled to Europe in 1950, Walters realised that modern art had learned important lessons from the arts of the Pacific. Soon after, he began working with the koru, or fern bud, motif – a Maori decorative form used on rafter paintings, incised gourds and in tattooing. In the extraordinary series of abstract paintings that resulted, this simple form expresses a vast range of dynamic relationships.
Merging the geometry of modernist abstract painting with the unfurling fern motif from Maori art, Walters' koru paintings are meditations on the theme of exchange – the way forms and ideas move from one place to another and change along the way.
In the 1980s Walters’ work reached a new level of refinement, which explored the potential of shapes that overlap each other. Refining the tenor of his painting, brushstrokes became virtually invisible, the colours more subtle and softly muted, and the surfaces rendered with total precision. Walters was in the habit of returning to his ‘back catalogue’ of early studies and source material for inspiration and many of the ideas for these late works are nascent in the 1950s gouache paintings.
The work included in this sale, Untitled, 1982,, illustrates Walters' experimentation with a landscape format. The delicately modulated colour draws the eye in, highlighting Walters' superb mastery of his medium.
Exhibited
New Paintings and Works on Paper, Artis Gallery, Auckland, 9 July - 3 August 1985
Gordon Walters: New Vision, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki 2017 - 2018, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, 2018
ILLUSTRATED GORDON WALTERS NEW VISION, (Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki & Dunedin Public Art Gallery, 2017) p.30 (fig 16)
Gordon Walters: New Vision, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki 2017 - 2018, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, 2018
ILLUSTRATED GORDON WALTERS NEW VISION, (Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki & Dunedin Public Art Gallery, 2017) p.30 (fig 16)
