studio international borrows its title from the international art magazine founded in London in 1964, whose illustrated pages offered glimpses into what was happening in the rest of the world to young and hungry artists here in Aotearoa. Among these artists was a young Dick Frizzell, who was studying at Ilam School of Fine Arts, University of Canterbury in the early 1960s.
International Modernism hit ILAM like a meteorite in 1961, and I was directly in the path of it ... We suspected that something bigger was going on in the world thanks to ancient copies of the 'studio international' magazine but could never grasp the whole picture, such was the communication hole we seemed to be stuck in.
With works dating from the 1990s through to the present, this exhibition includes a number of Frizzell’s archetypal homages to great artists of the 20th Century, including American sculptor Alexander Calder (1898 – 1976; French painter and sculptor Fernand Léger (1881-1955); Spanish painter Juan Gris (1887 – 1927); and Swiss sculptor Jean Tinguely (1925 – 1991).
While among Aotearoa's most celebrated artists, Dick Frizzell (b.1943, Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau) has often slipped through the nets of traditional critical definition. In fact, the success of his career is, in part, due to the dramatic diversions he has made between different styles and genres. Before becoming a full-time painter in 1995, Frizzell worked in advertising and as a result has no qualms about blurring categories, with paintings often emerging as a pastiche of images drawing on modern art and graphic design.
Frizzell’s work has always been characterised by a highly skilled handling of paint and an endlessly inventive range of subject matter and styles. His taste is conveniently broad, and he has a penchant for fondly remembered and well-worn clichés. His work also portrays a sense of exuberance, irony, and nostalgia. An anti-traditionalist, Frizzell makes a deliberate effort to subvert the hierarchies of 'high' and 'low' art - poking fun at the existential angst of much New Zealand painting in the art culture of his youth.
He is represented in public collections including Christchurch Art Gallery, The Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery, and Te Papa Museum of New Zealand. Frizzell was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to the arts in 2004. Exhibition highlights include the major travelling retrospective Dick Frizzell: Portrait of a Serious Artiste (1997) and a residency in Antarctica as part of the Invitational Artist Programme (2005). Frizzell has published numerous books including the monograph Dick Frizzell: The Painter (2009); It’s All About the Image (2011); and Me, According to the History of Art (2020).
Read the full version of Dick Frizzell's reflections on the meteorite that was International Modernism here.
