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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen-Webb's
• Sale Name:
  The Peter Jarvis & Helene Phillips Collection
• Sale Date:
  30 Nov 2017 ~ 6.30pm (New Zealand Daylight Time)
• Lot #:
  26
• Lot Description:
  Rudi Gopas
  Baltic Boats
  tempera and oil on canvas on Swedish board, 1963
  650mm x 725mm
  signed GOPAS and dated '63 in brushpoint lower left; inscribed "Baltic Boats" in ink on label affixed verso
• Notes:
  ESSAY: During his time teaching at Ilam School of Fine Arts, Rudi Gopas taught students such as Philip Clairmont, Tony Fomison, Kura Te Waru Rewiri and Philip Trusttum, introducing them to the intellectual and philosophical pursuits of German expressionism and the traditions of modern European art. Parallel to his teaching, Gopas was prolific in his own artistic endeavours and exhibited his work alongside some of New Zealand’s most senior modernist artists, including Toss Woollaston, Colin McCahon and Rita Angus. Painted in the early 1960s, Baltic Boats demonstrates a shift in Gopas’ practice from the realist expressionism of his earlier portraiture to abstract expressionism; this change enabled him, increasingly, to free himself from defined subject matter and spatial relationships. His work became larger in scale, less representational and more experimental. He made use of a richer and more varied palette, which was darker and more intense, and resulted in a picture surface that was more painterly and a more vigorous expression of his perception of the dynamic forces in nature. Highly saturated colours and intensity of brushwork define Gopas’ work from this period and show the influence of the early-20th-century German expressionist Die Brücke artists; the members of this group sought to express their inner experiences “through the profound presence and unity of nature”. They travelled each year to remote parts of the Baltic Coast to work, finding inspiration in its bare isolation. Emile Nolde (1887–1956) described the Baltic coastline as “so grey, so simple, yet so splendidly rich with the animation of sun and wind and clouds”. In Gopas’ painting, the scene becomes a dynamic vision of agitated line and expressionist colour. The masts of the boats are rendered as dark diagonal slashes, emerging from a heavy grey sky punctuated with brilliant bursts of red and white.
• Estimate:
  NZ$15,000 - 25,000
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

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• Category:
  Art

This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.