Trailblazers: Rita Angus

Rita Angus was a pioneer of modern art in New Zealand.

RITA ANGUS Artist 1908–1970

Pioneer of modern art

A pioneer of modern painting in New Zealand, Rita Angus – born Henrietta Catherine Angus – had her talent recognised early. At Palmerston North Girls' High School, art teacher G.E. Elliott encouraged Angus into further study.

In 1927, she enrolled at Canterbury College School of Art for a four-year diploma in fine arts. While Angus never completed the diploma, her studies introduced her to new techniques and styles, international artists and, through art history classes, Renaissance and Medieval Art. She gained as much from experiences outside the classroom by visiting touring exhibitions, befriending and working alongside other artists and traveling throughout Canterbury and Otago.

In 1936, two years after the break-up of a short-lived marriage to fellow artist Alfred Cook, Angus joined friend and colleague Louise Henderson on a trip to Arthur's Pass.

Drawings from the excursion became the basis for Cass, a painting of a small Canterbury railway station, which, in 1940, was exhibited in the National Centennial Exhibition of New Zealand Art. That was the beginning of critical recognition of Angus' work; in a 2006 television poll, Cass was voted the country's most-loved painting.

Like many artists, her life encompassed financial struggle, ill health, and conflict between personal convictions and the prevailing norms of society. In World War II, for example, she was a pacifist and these beliefs made their way into her art of the 1940s while a passionate relationship with composer Douglas Lilburn ended in the death of their unborn child. But Angus continued to walk a singular path, making fresh work which took her in different directions.

In 1958, aged 50, she won a New Zealand Art Societies' Fellowship and traveled to London to study at the Chelsea School of Art and the Institute of Contemporary Arts. She continued painting until her death, aged 61, in 1970 from cancer.

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