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April 29, 2014
Lindauer portraits to be seen in artist’s home town
Waatea Team
Posted On April 29, 2014
Toi o Tamaki’s Maori curator is describing paintings by 19th century painter Gottfried Lindauer as the Auckland Art Gallery’s best kept secret.
The gallery is touring 48 of his portraits of Maori to Europe, the first time they have been shown outside Aotearoa for a century.
They will be shown in Berlin, German, and at the Gallery of West Bohemia in the painter’s birthplace of Pilsen in the Czech Republic as part of Pilsen’s term as the European Capital of Culture.
Ngahiraka Mason says seeing Lindauer’s early works in Pilsen gave her a new awareness of how his work came out of his training as a religious painter.
"People are bathed in warm light. The point of the portrait is to convey something of that person to the viewer, so what I saw of his portraits in Europe tells me that he treated his Maori subjects in the very same way. I think that makes him distinct as a colonial painter," she says.
Ngahiraka Mason says the Lindauer paintings bring many Maori in to the gallery, and they are also greatly appreciated by international visitors.
FOR THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH NGAHIRAKA MASON CLICK ON THE LINK
https://secure.zeald.com/uma/play_podcast?podlink=MTc1OTQ=
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