John Blackburn British, 1932-2022
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John BlackburnThree Trees with Two Forms, 2022Mixed media on canvas panel60.5 x 81.5 cm -
John BlackburnGreen Sails, 2021mixed media on canvas board36 x 46 cm
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John BlackburnThe Apartment, The Mount , 2010Oil & mixed media on canvas mounted on board80 x 50 x 5 cm
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John BlackburnFour Trees with Assorted Cups, 2022Mixed media on canvas mounted on board61 x 122.5 cm
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John BlackburnFrom Green to Yellow, 2021Mixed media on canvas board51 x 61 cm
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John BlackburnThe Cross, 2022Mixed media on canvas/board panels
Triptych84.5 x 179 cm -
John BlackburnIn the Garden, 2021Mixed media canvas board40 x 48 cm
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John BlackburnOrange Form, 2019Oil & mixed media on canvas54 x 75 cm
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John BlackburnAssemblage of Gentle Cups, 2022Mixed media on 6 mm board70.5 x 98.5 cm
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John BlackburnHarlequin, 2019Oil & mixed media on canvas59 x 84 cm
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John BlackburnMuriwai Morning, 2014Oil & mixed media on canvas mounted on board76 x 60 cm
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John BlackburnBig Black, 2014Oil & mixed media on canvas mounted on board125 x 125 x 5 cm
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John BlackburnGrey Form with White Square, 2010Oil & mixed media on canvas mounted on board57 x 113 x 5 cm
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John BlackburnGreen Field, 2010Oil & mixed media on canvas mounted on board60 x 50 x 5 cm
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John Blackburn2 Squares, Grey to Left, 2008Oil & mixed media on canvas board45.5 x 61 x 5 cm
ARTIS Gallery has represented Blackburn since 2009 – and held an annual exhibition for him over the past sixteen years. Since Blackburn’s death in October 2022, his family in England have continued to release works to ARTIS.
John Blackburn spent a decade in New Zealand after serving with the Royal Air Force and met
his future New Zealand wife. On their return to his native England in 1961, he was arguably the most radical painter working in Auckland. Strangely, there is not a paragraph in New Zealand art history about him – besides his inclusion as one of ten artists at the Auckland City Art Gallery in November 1959. Colin McCahon, who selected the artist for this exhibition, spotted Blackburn’s work at his first solo exhibition at Auckland’s short-lived Circle Gallery.
From 1961 through to 1980, when he changed his focus due to a business venture opportunity, Blackburn was an adventurous and exciting full-time painter. It was the chance discovery of some of Blackburn’s works acquired in the 1960s by the renowned collector, curator and writer, Jim Ede, which led to renewed interest in the artist. After an absence of twenty-five years, Blackburn was re-launched back into the art world with a full-scale retrospective, including striking large new works. This show at Folkestone’s Metropole Galleries in 2006 was followed by an exhibition at the prestigious Osborne Samuel Gallery in Mayfair, London. Osborne Samuel Gallery continue to represent Blackburn since his death in 2022.
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SUMMER SELECTION
19 February - 9 March 2025Read more -
JOHN BLACKBURN
4 - 18 February 2025Read more -
John Blackburn
REMINISCE 27 February - 10 March 2024Read more -
John Blackburn
90 Years 14 - 27 February 2023In June 2022 we celebrated the milestone of John’s 90th birthday and four months ago he sent us a collection of stunning new paintings for his 2023 exhibition. It was whilst those paintings were at the framers in preparation for this exhibition that we received the sad news of John’s passing on October 22nd. Since 2009 John has been a massive supporter of ARTIS Gallery and a valued mentor to our younger artists. We have formed a strong personal friendship with John and Maude. John’s elegant presence at his exhibition openings will be sorely missed. As John said to me in 2017, ‘there’s no point in simply doing what you already know; the important thing is to search for what you don’t know’.Read more -
John Blackburn & Margaret Lovell
An Unbroken Duality 8 - 24 February 2022Art is often a barometer of its time, and the fraught conditions of recent years have informed the content and mood of the work of many artists, including that of the two veteran British abstractionists shown in this exhibition. In her adopted country of New Zealand, sculptor Margaret Lovell reacted to global uncertainties with what she came to realise was a subconscious need to simplify, to pare down her forms in a meditative process in which clarity and strength were constant watchwords. In contrast, during sustained periods of lockdown in both Auckland and at his English home, John Blackburn, always a highly physical painter, felt impelled to work with even greater rawness and immediacy. On the face of it then, divergent energies appear to be operating here, though in fact a closer examination reveals that these artists have much in common.Read more
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John Blackburn
Extended Stay 2 - 18 February 2021‘Extended Stay’, an exhibition of new works by John Blackburn, reflects on the artist’s forced hiatus in New Zealand at the beginning of the Global Covid-19 Pandemic. Blackburn and his...Read more -
John Blackburn + Marian Fountain
Parallel Reflections 11 - 23 February 2020Returning from London for his 11 th exhibition at ARTIS Gallery, it is both apposite and convenient to suggest that John Blackburn’s career has spanned parallel paths both in New...Read more -
John Blackburn & Margaret Lovell
All Fired Up 12 - 25 February 2019Although still going strong at 86, it is both apposite and convenient to propose that John Blackburn’s extraordinary career as a painter is now bookended by fire works. For surely,...Read more -
John Blackburn & Peter Panyoczki
Two Modernists 20 February - 12 March 2018John Blackburn is well known in Britain and New Zealand as an abstract painter of originality and vision. Shapes and applications have reoccured frequently in his works throughout the past decades, but they are always fresh and illuminating, reflecting both order and change – “continually open to experience and reassessment”. Blackburn’s paintings are made up of overlapping layers – each embedded with their own meaning. These contrasting layers interact with each other, creating an euphony of colour, texture and form.Read more
Peter Panyoczki is a highly regarded mixed media artist, working in a hybrid of forms and mediums including painting, sculpture, installation, photography and digital technology. Panyoczki’s work expresses the paradox of communication that refuses to reveal itself by providing information of what it is made of. A common feature in Peter’s works is the presence of texture, be it actual surface texture or the representation thereof. The textured surfaces are evocative, forming notions of one’s past and inner self, or that which has been buried and forgotten.
