Frances Hodgkins: European Journeys

Frances Hodgkins: European Journeys', developed and toured by Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.

Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi is proud to be the last New Zealand venue for Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki’s touring exhibition Frances Hodgkins: European Journeys. Featuring more than 65 works produced between 1901 and 1946, some drawn from private collections in Wellington, this exhibition has been specially reconceived for the gallery’s unique spaces. Curated by Mary Kisler, an acknowledged expert on Hodgkins and her work, this is the culmination of a significant international project to explore the artist’s place in 20th-century art. The exhibition traces Frances Hodgkins’ creative and peripatetic life through France, Morocco and Spain to her final days in England, tracking her unique engagement with modernism, examining the influence of location on her development as a painter, and exploring how travel and journeying served her as sources of artistic inspiration.

Born in Dunedin, Frances Hodgkins (1869–1947) left for Europe in 1901 and, by the late 1920s, had become an important figure within British Modernism, exhibiting with avant-garde artists such as Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore. With a professional life that spanned almost six decades, the two World Wars, and periods of massive social and cultural change, Hodgkins caught the spirit of a new age. Today, she is celebrated as one of New Zealand’s most successful expatriate artists of the 20th century, and has an ongoing legacy in both Europe and this country.

Image: Francis Hodgkins, Red Jug, 1931, oil on canvas. Collection of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, purchased 1982.