Lithuanian -Bom Painter’s Exhibition
Rudolf Gopas, who is holding an exhibition of paintings and drawings at the Durham sareet art gallery, was born in Lithuania in 1913. and came to New Zealand from Austria in 1949. His work is founded primarily on expressive colour and this alone is enough to distinguish it from the general run of New Zealand painting, in much of which colour seems to have been regarded merely as a necessary encumbrance. But in addition. Mr Gopas's painting is in a direct line of descent from the early 20thcentury expressionist painting of northern and central Europe and it is in emotional key which is unfamiliair to us. Mr Gopas uses a full range of colour—strong reds, blues, greens and sour yellow—with the darkest tones being given the fullest possible intensity and hue differentiation. As with the Blue Rider and Die Bruecke painters who are bis artistic forefathers, this polychromaticism is emotionally ambi-ualent. It is at once scnsutxis’y gratifying and t-motionaJly turbulent, though its heavy nostalgia and melancholy is quite unlike the
hysteria or morbid eroticism at the earlier painters. The romantic atmosphere the emotional power of his colour creates is reinforced by Mr Gropas’s forceful brusfcwurk. He neither tortures bis paint into decorative texture nor smoothes it into feature less anonymity; he uses it because he wants a mark of a certain colour in a certain place and he puts it there with a vigour and directness that is extremely refreshing after the technical self-consciousness of . much local painting. Structural Scheme But. like nearly ail romantic artiste, Mr Gopas does not always create a vehicle capable of carrying so strong an emotional charge and the form of his painting is often disturbingly unresolved. The structural scheme of his pointings is generally the same: a series of diagonals thrusting leftwards from the bottom, counteracted by a more horiaoatal movement sweeping across toe top to the right. In at least a dozen paintings this is accompanied by a foumal weakness that becomes increasingly disturbing the more one looks at tihe work. The bottom left corner is cut across by a diagonal so emphatic and strategically important that a triangular area is left unrelated to the rest and the eye is continually directed back to this irresolution. However, when Mr Gopas does solve all his compositional problems—as in “Baithens” (No. 33) —the result can be very impressive. When distractions of form disappear his colour takes on even more importance and in the work named there are some beautifully vibrant passages. —J.N.K.
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Press, Volume CI, Issue 29878, 19 July 1962, Page 7
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421Lithuanian -Bom Painter’s Exhibition Press, Volume CI, Issue 29878, 19 July 1962, Page 7
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