GOPAS, RUDOLF (1913-1983)

Name: GOPAS, RUDOLF (1913-1983)
Price: 6500 AUD
Availability: InStock

$6,500.00

"Landing II Series" (Galactic Landscape) (1967)

mixed media

signed lower right

*exhibited at New Vision Gallery, Auckland, 1967

*private collection, Sydney

Rudolf 'Rudi' Gopas was a prominent Lithuanian-born New Zealand Modernist, pioneering Abstract Expressionist & Instructor. He was born in Siluté, Germany (today Lithuania) & studied painting at the School of Fine Arts in Kaunas. During the occupation of Lithuania by German military during World War II, he served in the German army.
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When the Russian army invaded, the Gopas family fled to Germany. From 1944-48, they lived in a refugee camp at Ehrwald, making a living producing portrait & landscape paintings. In 1949, Gopas travelled to NZ on an Irish boat, the Dundalk-Bay, which brought NZ Government-assisted immigrants from central and eastern Europe.
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Once settled in NZ, Gopas began to re-establish himself as a painter. From 1949-53, he exhibited works at the NZ Academy of Fine Arts in Wellington, & he began to exhibit at the Otago Art Society. In 1951, Gopas & others formed The Independent Group, in response to The Group in Christchurch. Gopas was appointed lecturer in painting at the School of Fine Arts, University of Canterbury in 1959, becoming one of the most influential art teachers in NZ.
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Having begun a career as a Modernist (inspired by the German & Post Expressionists), his style changed radically, shifting to pure abstraction & mixed media, one of the first in NZ. Inspired by Space, his Galactic Landscapes have richly textured surfaces, & innovative use of metallic powders in combination with PVA paints & glazes. In the 1970s his vision of the cosmos resounded with apocalyptic warnings. His Galactic paintings are known as his best works & are sought after!! Gopas' works are held in the collections of the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Christchurch Art Gallery & the Hocken Library. In his later years, he was dogged by ill health, alcoholism & spent a stint in a Christchurch Mental Asylum. He died two weeks before his first major career retrospective. This work was exhibited at the New Vision Gallery in Auckland, 1967.