Print Show Offer Fails

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31584, 23 January 1968, Page 6

Print Show Offer Fails

An offer by a Christchurch artist to meet the costs of an exhibition of German prints in the Robert McDougall Art Gallery has been declined by W. S. Baverstock, director of the gallery. The exhibition, a retrospective covering 20 years work by Paul Wunderlich, will not be shown in Christchurch. Barry Cleavin, a printmaker who is Christchurch representative on the New Zealand Print Council, made the offer when he heard that the Wunderlich exhibition would only be shown in Auckland. He was prepared to pay for the freight costs of the exhibition, and to assist with its hanging and publicity. “It would be cheaper for me to pay for it to be brought down to Christchurch than for me to go to Auckland to see it,” he explained. Cleavin described Wunderlich, who was born about 1927, as a modern master. He had heard the exhibition described as “a tour de force.” He said two of Wunderlich’s paintings, of transparent figures, were shown in the McDougall gallery during an exhibition of contemporary German painting. Cleavin said the director of the gallery said in his letter that the prints would ba of limited interest.