Mina Arndt

Hermina "Mina" Arndt (18 April 1885 – 22 December 1926) was a New Zealand artist.

Biography Arndt was born at Thurlby Domain, near Queenstown on 18 April 1885, the third daughter of Jewish parents Maria and Herman Arndt. Her father died shortly before her birth, and her mother moved the family to Dunedin where Mina attended Otago Girls' High School. Later in Wellington, she attended art classes at the technical college before embarking for Europe.

In 1906, Arndt was living in London studying under Frank Brangwyn at the London School of Art in Kensington. While there she met German printmaker Hermann Struck, who invited her to study etching with him in Berlin, which was considered an honour as he rarely took pupils.

In February 1915, The Evening Post newspaper visited her studio in Willis Street, Wellington and commented that her work had a "strong, almost masculine character...Free, firm, broad, sure strokes, and never a suspicion of pretty-prettiness." The same article referred to works in her studio in a variety of media: charcoal, oils, etchings and drypoints. The artist herself singled out an oil portrait of a woman in her fifties, as one which had attracted much attention and high praise, while the Post's reviewer praised another oil portrait of a woman wearing an orange shawl, as "startling". However, her etchings and charcoal drawings proved more acceptable to the New Zealand public than her canvases, which were felt to be too dark and solemn for local tastes. Arndt continued working, drawing on the local landscape and her young son and step-daughter as subjects. She established a summer school for painters at Motueka and held classes. She also gave classes in New Plymouth when visiting one of her sisters who lived there. At the age of 41, she died at her sister's residence in Wellington on 22 December 1926 of nephritis, and was buried at Karori Cemetery.

Retrospective exhibitions of her work were held by the Suter Gallery in Nelson (1960) and the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts in Wellington in 1961.

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