Rita Angus: An Artist's Life

Description

Jill Trevelyan won the Non Fiction Award at the Montana New Zealand Book Awards in 2009 for this magnificent biography of one of New Zealands leading 20th century artists. Now back in print, this revised edition brings the book up to date with new assessments of Angus and in the context of the big Royal Academy show that opens in London in November 2020. Rita Angus was a pioneer of modern painting during the 1930s and 1940s. More than 100 years after her birth, works such as Rutu (1951), Central Otago (1940), and Portrait of Betty Curnow (19411942) are national icons. While Angus is perhaps New Zealands best-loved painter, the story of her life remained little known and poorly understood before this acclaimed and revelatory book. Jill Trevelyan traces Anguss life, from her childhood in Napier and Palmerston North to her death in Wellington in 1970. Drawing on a wealth of archives and letters, she brings to life Rita Angus the person: highly articulate and full of zest, intellectually curious and forthright in her attitudes and emotions, powerfully committed to her pacifist and feminist beliefs and dedicated, above all, to life as an artist. Rita Angus: An Artists Life is generously illustrated with more than 150 artworks and private photographs to bring Angus her private struggles and public reputation and her greatest legacy, her art to complex, colourful life.

Jill Trevelyan is a Wellington art historian and curator. She is the editor of Toss Woollaston: A Life in Letters (Te Papa Press, 2004) and the co-author of Rita Angus: Live to Paint & Paint to Live (Random House, 2001). Her biography of Peter McLeavey won the book of the year award at the 2014 New Zealand Post Book Awards.

'Making use of a cache of 400 letters written by the artists and composer Douglas Lilburn as well as the many published writings, books films and personal accounts Trevelyan has made the artist accessible with insights into her professional and personal life which gives us an appreciation of how and why she produced her art.' - NZ Arts Review; '... the first and only bio of Rita Angus, feminist, pacifist, socialist, has been juiced and spruced by Jill Trevelyan ... It's stacked with the works of one of our best-loved painters ...' - NZ Listener.