Date:
Prizewinning New Zealand Landscape Paintings from the Kelliher Art Competition 1956 - 1977
Location: Main Gallery - Te Kōputu a te whanga a Toi - Whakatāne Library and Exhibition Centre
The Kelliher Art Trust collection comprises just over 100 paintings, the majority of which are New Zealand landscapes, that won prizes or awards in the Kelliher Art Competition, held most years between 1956 and 1977.
Open to New Zealand resident artists, founder Sir Henry Kelliher explained that the objective of the Competition was "to encourage artists to paint the essential character of the New Zealand scene and the ways of life of its people and thereby to develop a livelier appreciation of the fine arts and of the infinitely varied aspects of our land."
The Kelliher exhibitions received enormous national publicity and were immensely popular; the 1957 exhibition alone was viewed by over 10,000 people. Anecdotally, we know that for many visitors, the Kelliher was their introduction to New Zealand painting. However, the Kelliher was not unanimously welcomed, especially by modernist artists – and arts commentators – because there was nothing in it for them; the conditions of entry were too restrictive. While the public continued to demonstrate their enthusiastic support by their presence in large numbers at the annual exhibition, the last Kelliher was in 1977.
In its much-anticipated survey of the Kelliher, the Kelliher Art Trust is bringing Infinitely Varied: Prizewinning New Zealand Landscape Paintings from the Kelliher Art Competition 1956-1977, a touring exhibition of works from the collection, to the Whakatāne Museum, giving the public an all-too-infrequent opportunity to view some classic New Zealand paintings from the second half of the 20th century by some of the country's best-known practitioners of the era.
Works by celebrated New Zealand artists Cedric Savage, Peter McIntyre and Austen Deans will be on display, as well as a special showing of the Trust’s only Charles Goldie painting, Portrait of a Maori Chief, 1939. Goldie is possibly New Zealand's best known painter, whose reputation was largely established by his striking portraits of Maori from around 1900 to 1939, commissioned and admired by Maori as well as admired and purchased by Pākehā.
