Film Screening: ‘Signed, Theo Schoon’

Watch a documentary about artist Theo Schoon. In the context of New Zealand culture in the second half of the 20th century, the Dutch émigré Theo Schoon (1915-1985) rocked our world. For all the ‘noise’ that has surrounded Schoon, the personality — as in mad, bad and dangerous to know — of the artist that emerges from this film is one who gave infinitely more than he took.

Signed, Theo Schoon (2021) grew from a popular biography of the artist Theo Schoon by Damian Skinner and a subsequent touring exhibition titled Split Level View Finder.

While the film draws from both the biography and the exhibition, it takes a significantly different path as it traverses the social and cultural landscapes from the late 1930s through to Schoon’s death in the mid 1980s. The film explores a gradual re-assessment of Theo's involvement in New Zealand art, his influence on some of the country’s major visual artists — both Pākehā and Māori — as well as on the crafts community, ensuring Schoon’s little known but enduring legacy.

As the arc light of the debate has swung back onto Schoon, a young openly gay artist who came to New Zealand in the late 1930s, his journey and discoveries — contentious though they may be today — affected change for both individuals and the culture. Theo was the hinge around which others swung into a deeper appreciation of the New Zealand experience.

Whilst the central pivot for the documentary is Schoon, the film is a much broader story which illustrates our important cultural history and helps us to better know who we are, and where we have come from.

https://natlib.govt.nz/events/jan-and-luit-bieringa-collection