Provenance:
Collection of Neville Price, Architect, Auckland Purchased in Auckland 1971 - same era as his renown Minnehaha Ave townhouse and West Plaza building projects
Exhibited:
Eight New Zealand Artists, Commonwealth Institute Gallery, London 25 February - 20 March 1965, Original label affixed verso
Robert Ellis's City of Childhood formed part of an exhibition at the Commonwealth Institute Gallery in 1965, where it featured alongside works by McCahon, Hanly and other important names in New Zealand modernism. It belongs to the seminal City series of the mid-1960s in which Ellis applied his skill as an observation-based painter to the creation of aerialbased portraits of Auckland, documenting and commenting on the city's rapid transformation through the introduction of motorways. Thick, painterly incisions indicate the presence of complex roads and arterial routes whilst across the top of the painting, a band of earthy-red marks the uncomplicated and striking edge of contrast to this urban conversion. Artist's statement: I am thrilled to see this painting. I painted the work in Glenelg, a suburb of Adelaide, in a friend's garage in incredible heat. I hadn't seen the painting since. The palette reflects the Adelaide environment, the intense temperatures and the sand. I also remember the flies. I later asked Russell (Tass) Drysdale the well known Aussie painter how he coped with the numerous insects and he said, 'I don't worry, just mix them in with the paint!' I showed nine oil paintings, about the same size, in the Rudy Komon Gallery, Sydney. I was always fond of that series and I've only seen one of them in a private collection since that time. Robert Ellis, April 2017