Art & creativity  |  9 Sep 2024

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An exhibition with a significant collection of landscape works by the influential Ōtautahi artist Leo Bensemann opens this weekend.

It will be the first exhibition of the artist’s work at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū since the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake forced the major retrospective, Leo Bensemann: A Fantastic Art Venture, to close.

That exhibition was open for just 10 days before the earthquake struck, and it would be five years before the Gallery would open its doors again.

Leo Bensemann: Paradise Garden showcases the highly imaginative landscape paintings that defined the later years of Leo Bensemann’s (1912–1986) artistic career. It will go on display alongside another new exhibition of works by artist duo Edwards + Johann, on Saturday 14 September.

Leo Bensemann Rain in the Paradise Garden, Takaka 1979. Oil on hardboard. Collection Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, purchased with assistance from a group of Canterbury artists, 1991

Curator Peter Vangioni says that Mohua Golden Bay became an endless source of inspiration for Bensemann.

“He lived and worked in Ōtautahi but was born and raised in Mohua and Whakakū Nelson. However, it was a 1965 holiday in Tākaka that ignited Bensemann’s two-decade-long fascination with the landscape there – especially the unique marble rock formations found in the area,” Mr Vangioni says.

“Playing with scale and surrealism, Bensemann enlarged small pieces of rock to appear like gargantuan geological forms, thrusting out of the earth.”

The rock that inspired the drawing “The Dolomite Madonna, Tākaka” in 1976 and two paintings in 1979, including “Rain in the Paradise Garden, Tākaka”, is featured in the show along with several others.

“They’re surprisingly small, but that’s all part of the intrigue of Bensemann’s art: it’s layered with his own imaginative interpretation of the world.”

Mr Vangioni says that while Bensemann’s art often has darker undertones, works like “Morning, Tākaka” and “Wainui” capture the hill and bay landscapes of Mohua with a majestic and serene quality.

“Every summer, Bensemann returned to the bay and revisited these landscapes over and over, producing the collection of major paintings seen in this exhibition.”

Of those times, the artist said: “All I’ve been doing is eating, sleeping, swimming and painting.”

The exhibition draws heavily on the Gallery’s permanent collection, which includes one work given by the Friends of the Christchurch Art Gallery after Bensemann’s death in 1986.

“Bensemann was a master of many styles and drew acclaim in his younger years for his intricate and fanciful pen and ink sketches. These were published in Fantastica: Thirteen Drawings (1937) by the Caxton Press – which prints the Gallery’s Bulletin magazine to this day.

“During those years, Bensemann was invited to join The Group – a prestigious artistic circle that included the likes of Rita Angus and Louise Henderson. He rented a studio flat next door to Angus on Cambridge Terrace and the two worked closely together, even doing each other’s portraits. Both were highly influential in the mid-twentieth century, shifting the dial of art tradition in Aotearoa from realism to modern.”

Leo Bensemann: Paradise Garden opens at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū on Saturday 14 September, with a free talk at 11am by the artist’s biographer Peter Simpson. The exhibition closes Sunday 9 February 2025.

Image credit: Leo Bensemann On The Takaka Hill 1977. Oil on board. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, purchased, 1983