PROVENANCE

Sir Graeme & Lady Florence Davies collection, London

Purchased from New Vision Gallery, Auckland 1973

Wellington born Gordon Walters was a pioneer of modernist abstraction in New Zealand. This painter showed an unflinching commitment to abstraction at a time when landscape was the norm. Walters is best known for his Koru works, whose unique stylisation of the Maori koru motif developed out of a phase of experimentation in the 1950s. The geometric spiral form of the koru began appearing consistently in Walters' work from the late 1950s.

My work is an investigation of positive/ negative relationships within a deliberately limited range of forms; the forms I use have no descriptive value in themselves and are used solely to demonstrate relations. I believe that dynamic relations are most clearly expressed by the repetition of a few simple elements. GORDON WALTERS