Frances Hodgkins
Hodgkins is recognised as New Zealand's most significant expatriate modernist painter to emerge during the twentieth century. Born in Dunedin, she spent the majority of her artistic career in Europe and the United Kingdom. She was considered highly among British avant-garde and by the later stages of her career had secured her position as a key figure in British Modernism.
Prior to Hodgkins departure for Europe in 1901, her works appear influenced by "impressionistic concerns of evoking light, colour and atmosphere." (Michael Dunn, Frances Hodgkins: Paintings and Drawings, Auckland University Press, Auckland, 1994, p.8.). In 1929 Hodgkins became associated with the Seven and Five Society, exhibiting alongside leading British avant-garde artists such as Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson and Henry Moore. As a result of the groups influence she became particularly interested in combining landscape and still life genres in her work, often painting urns, and jugs filled with bouquets of flowers and patterned table cloths which were set in the foreground of a landscape.
The late 1930s onwards represents a highly productive and confident stage in Hodgkins' career as she continued to consider new approaches in her use of iconography, colour, composition and style. Of particular note are her still life paintings from this period. What becomes crucial to the success of Hodgkins' imagery at this time is the overall design of the works and the relationship between the line and shape of the arranged objects. The spatial ambiguity resulting from the placement of the objects in her still life paintings gives the appearance of semi-abstracted works, characterised by sharp, floating forms that are held together with washes of colour. By the early 1940s, Hodgkins had exhibited in four major solo shows including those at Leicester and Lefevre Galleries, as well as participating in approximately thirty group shows in Britain and abroad. As a result of her artistic achievements she was selected as part of a small group of artists to represent Britain at the Biennale di Venezia toward the later stages of her career in 1940.