NEWS FOR WOMEN Overseas Study For Artists Advocated

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28217, 4 March 1957, Page 2

NEWS FOR WOMEN Overseas Study For Artists Advocated

“It is necessary for New Zealand painters to go overseas to study the work of others, particularly the Old Masters. The range of painting in this country is too limited to form a standard to judge our own works. But in New Zealand with its mountains, bush and brightly painted suburbs there is all that is required to stimulate good painting.” This is the opinion of Miss Valerie Heinz, of Merivale, who recently returned home after spending nearly three years overseas studying painting, and travelling. For two and a half years she took a full-time course at the Arts School of the Regent Street Polytechnic, where she studied textile designing, life painting and composition.

“The teaching methods and course of study were not very different from the work I had done previously at the Canterbury College School of Art. However, the students have better opportunities because of the many London exhibitions of English qnd foreign paintings, and the Tate and National galleries,” said Miss Heinz.

London students Jiad the advantage of being able to form a standard and were better able to judge their own work, she said. Another advantage they had was they could see the Old Masters in the originals. Art students in New Zealand had to rely on photographs and coloured prints which were so much reduced in size that they failed to reveal all the qualities of the original. • English Paintings

Asked for her comments on English painting, Miss Heinz said that the first thing she noticed when she entered the exhibition was that the colours were very low in tone. New Zealand paintings were considerably brighter. Some persons considered that it was only a passing phase, but she thought it was due to some extent to the influence of environment. There was less sunlight in England, and London was a rather dull and cloudy city. There was a great variety of subject matter but very little direct landscape

painting as known, in New Zealand. “The composition of English paintings is of all kinds—landscape, figure and abstract—and the treatment ranges from the very meticulous realist style 'of Lucien Freud to the more abstract work of Ben Nicholson. There seems to have been a reaction against the impressionists. I felt this when speaking to students, many of whom thought that impressionism had had its day and 'that new forms were needed,” Miss Heinz, said. .Though a good deal of the work was good there was much that was mediocre which depicted the Cornish-seaside-type scene, said Miss Heinz. The portrait exhibitions she saw during the three years she was in England were rather disappointing. The work was competent but photographic and rather stereotyped. It did not matter whether an artist chose to paint in a literal or abstract manner so long as he had an original viewpoint, she said. Intense Green One of her first impressions of England was the intense green of the landscape which was quite unlike the green of the New Zealand landscape, said Miss Heinz. Because English houses were built of stone, the farms, houses and villages blended very well with the landscape. “I always found London full of surprises and contrasts —Wren chprches among tall dingy office buildings and beautiful parks in very overcrowded areas. I particularly admired the' Georgean architecture, especially the -Nash buildings by Regent’s Park,” Miss Heinz said. She travelled through Holland, Denmark, and Italy, and was particularly fascinated by Italy, where she sought out paintings in churches in Florence, Venice, and Rome. Miss Heinz was impressed by the number of towns in Germany which had preserved their market places and half-timbered houses exactly as they were in former times.