HAY’S ART CONTEST

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30259, 11 October 1963, Page 17

HAY’S ART CONTEST

Second Show Of Entries

The second exhibition of paintings entered in the Hay’s, Ltd., Art competition is an extraordinary affair in which the whole range of the country’s painting is revealed, from a work by Milan Mrkusich that Is first-rate by international standards to the works of Sunday painters and self-taught beginners. In the latter group—the subconscious of the country’s artistic life —there is much that merely glibly copies the worst cliches of commercial and academic pot-boilers, but there are also a few paintings which testify to their creators’ fresh and uncorrupted delight in the visible world.

None of these naive painters is gifted with the sheer talent for painting and organising a picture that is also needed to make a first-rate painter of the so-called primitive type, but some of the works have real charm.

Mr Mrkusich’s "Emblem IV,’’ referred to above, is a magnificent work. He brings off the tour de force of integrating free, expressionistic brushwork with a basic geometrical abstraction of circles and rectangles. The colourglowing reds, purple-blues and broad, dignified areas of gold—is superb. Mr Mrkusich’s development has been spectacular in the last few years and the maturity and intelligence of his recent work add to New Zealand painting an element that it has vitally needed. The exhibition will remain at Hay’s gallery until October 15. Prices range from two to 275gns. —<J.N.K.