Rita Angus

Henrietta Catherine Angus (12 March 1908 – 25 January 1970), known as Rita Cook early in her career, was a New Zealand painter who, alongside Colin McCahon and Toss Woollaston, is regarded as one of the leading figures in twentieth-century New Zealand art. She worked primarily in oil and watercolour, and became known for her portraits and landscapes.

Biography

Early life Henrietta "Rita" Angus was born Henrietta Catherine Angus on 12 March 1908 in Hastings, New Zealand. She was the eldest of seven children of Scottish–English parents William McKenzie Angus and Ethel Violet Crabtree. Her father, William, was initially a carpenter by trade and eventually established the major construction company W. M. Angus Limited, later known as Angus Construction Ltd. The nature of her father's work necessitated moving between Palmerston North and Napier to follow building contracts. She never completed her diploma in fine arts but continued to study until 1933, including classes at the Elam School of Fine Arts in Auckland. Angus signed many of her paintings as Rita Cook between 1930 and 1946, but after she discovered in 1941 that Alfred Cook had remarried, she changed her surname by deed poll to McKenzie, her paternal grandmother's surname. As a result, some of her paintings are also signed R. Mackenzie or R. McKenzie, but the majority are signed Rita Angus.

After a short period teaching art in Napier, Angus lived mostly in Christchurch during the 1930s and 1940s.

Death From December 1969, Angus' condition rapidly deteriorated; she died in Wellington Hospital of ovarian cancer on 25 January 1970, aged 61. Among Angus' influences were Byzantine art and cubism. a response to New Zealand's distinctive clear lighting. Her landscapes came in a time when many people were concerned to create a distinctly New Zealand style, but Angus herself was not interested in defining a national style so much as her own style. Her paintings are clear, hard-edged and sharply defined. In the 1930s and 1940s she painted scenes of Canterbury and Otago. One of the most famous of these is Cass (1936) in which she portrayed the bare emptiness of the Canterbury landscape using simplified forms and mostly unblended colours arranged in sections in a style remiscent of poster art. Cass was voted New Zealand's most-loved painting in a 2006 television poll.

For a while, she lived next to the artist Leo Bensemann. Their adjacent flats became something of a hub of the local art scene and it is said that they spurred each other on in their art. It has been stated that Angus produced some of her finest pieces during this time including many portraits. She also produced comic art, signed with the name Rita Cook.

Angus' pacifist beliefs can be seen in her art of the 1940s, when she avoided any kind of war work. Angus stated, "As an artist it is my work to create life and not to destroy it." She created three goddess images symbolising peace of which "Rutu" is the most well known.

In 1958, she won a New Zealand Art Societies' Fellowship and travelled to London to study at the Chelsea School of Art and the Institute of Contemporary Arts. She also visited Scotland and Europe and studied modern and traditional European art.

Four of Angus's paintings were featured on a set of postage stamps issued by New Zealand Post in 1983 to mark the 75th anniversary of the artist's birth.

Exhibitions

1930: exhibition with Canterbury Society of Arts 1932: exhibition with The Group 1940: Cass and Self Portrait exhibited at the National Centennial Exhibition of New Zealand Art 1957: Angus' first solo exhibition, at the Wellington Art Centre gallery followed by solo exhibitions in 1961, 1963, 1964, 1967 1965: Commonwealth Institute, London (Contemporary Painting in New Zealand) 1982–1983: Rita Angus retrospective at the National Art Gallery in Wellington, New Zealand. 2008: a major retrospective of Angus' work at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Rita Angus: Life and Vision) to celebrate the centenary of her birth, followed by a tour to main centres around New Zealand. 2022: an exhibition celebrating 40 years of Angus's work - Rita Angus: New Zealand Modernist | He Ringatoi Hou o Aotearoa. The Museum of New Zealand | Te Papa Tongarewa. 2023: Rita Angus: New Zealand Modernist Exhibition - Tauranga Art Gallery | Toi Tauranga (Te Papa touring exhibition)