Chris Ronayne: Rudi Gopas: A Biography

By T.J. McNAMARA

There are two perspectives on the life of artist Rudi Gopas: from Auckland and from Christchurch. He stayed in Auckland memory only for the single show he had in the 1967 Auckland Festival and for isolated paintings in group touring shows.

The 1967 show of Galactic paintings arose out of Gopas' lifelong interest in astronomy. They were remarkable for their surfaces, which resembled a lunar landscape - one glittering with deep layers of colour that seemed a source of light rather than reflecting it. These impressive landscapes were also notable for the inventive use of PVA paint.

The occasional paintings that turned up in the group shows or were illustrated in books about contemporary New Zealand art were quite different. The most memorable were of fishing boats done with great authority and a glowing use of rich but sombre colour.

But Canterbury artists were full of anecdotes about the prominence of the man and his influential intellectual attitudes. It was evident that teaching at Ilam School of Fine Art at Canterbury University was an extraordinary personality who evoked both admiration and fear. The anecdotes were all about teaching methods that were brutal to any student perceived as a mediocrity - particularly if the student was a woman:

"You should use more turpentine with your paint."

"Why, Mr Gopas?"

"Because zey will burn more easily."

Later there were rumours of mental trouble, of obsession and delusion and poems that ended with the words, "Christchurch is Hell". Yet the memory remained of the excellence and power of that 1967 exhibition - paintings well reviewed but whose reception was seen by the artist, who "loved to be crucified a little" notes a friend, as a "set-back".

This well-presented biography of Gopas by his son-in-law fills in the background to this teacher of such important New Zealand painters as Tony Fomison, Philip Clairmont, Phillipa Blair and Philip Trusttum.

He has researched Gopas' early life as Rudolf Hopp in Memelland, a German-speaking part of Lithuania, his service with the German Army in World War II, his romantic first marriage and his arrival in New Zealand as a displaced person.

Ronayne has sifted out truth from legend in everything except perhaps the war service, where Gopas took care to smudge the record.

Ronayne's careful prose and conscientious interviewing indicate how alien the artist felt when, after a stay in a camp at Pahiatua, he found himself living in Dunedin in a society with little respect for or knowledge of artists.

Gopas' favourite place was Nidden, a fishing village on the Baltic coast that had become an artists' colony, where the young painter had his work commented on by Thomas Mann, then not so much a novelist as an intellectual demi-god. Gopas came from a society where philosophers such as Nietzsche and Schopenhauer were discussed.

His wife, who had been bombed out of Dresden and pushed her child and all her possessions in a pram across half of Germany, felt equally alien. He sensed that nobody here understood him and he had an aloof arrogance of manner even after his considerable talent had secured a reputation as an artist that saw him appointed to Ilam after time spent as a printer and photographer.

Ronayne does not shirk the grim detail of Gopas' decline into a hell of drugs and alcohol but he also provides detail of the handsome manner and athletic prowess of his subject as well as chronicling his second marriage which linked him with an extensive Maori family. What he does not do is attempt to analyse paintings in any detail, and revision of the nature of Gopas' achievement is still an open question.

What Ronayne does do extremely well is fill in the details of an extraordinary displaced life that had a considerable impact on the development of New Zealand art at a crucial time. Essential reading for anyone interested in the history of art, society or university teaching in New Zealand.

* David Ling Publishing, $49.95