Piera McArthur ONZM
Rehearsal I 2011 $7,500 framed Status: Available
Dancers Moscow (2011) $25,000 Status: Available
Two Figures II $10,500 Status: Available
Anzac Day at Maraekakaho (2022) $30,000 Status: Sold
Queens Piper (2022) $8,000 framed Status: Sold
Royalty (2022) $ 5,000 Status: Sold
Iconic New Zealand artist, Piera McArthur, was born in 1929 in Ramsgate, England. The family moved back to their native New Zealand in 1938 where the young Piera fostered her love of art and drawing.
After completing her schooling at Erskine College, Piera took up a Scholarship at Victoria University and received a Master of Arts in Modern Languages with First Class Honours. There she met fellow student John G. McArthur whom she married and accompanied throughout his career as one of New Zealand’s Senior Diplomats.
‘I owe much of my inspiration to the experiences of life in sophisticated capitals of the world. It is also a fact that my work deals largely with people, a theme of eternal interest and valid everywhere, in Paris, New York, Auckland, Timbuctoo.’
Piera lived and worked for many years in Paris. While painting in Moscow later on, she became the first New Zealander to have a solo show at the New Tretiakov Gallery in Russia. Of this experience she wrote, “I came of age as a painter, experiencing strong reaction both for and against”.
Piera describes her work as follows: “There are two poles to my work, which influence one another nevertheless. One is the fascinating world of drawing, a miraculous medium which can say it all, the other is the glorious world of colour and paint. My life aim as an artist is to travel on both these paths, combining and integrating. I am aiming for the thrill of ordered chaos, which can end in harmony.
My idea is to abstract the human form in close proximity, so that the bodies are reduced to simple plains, the people depicted become part of a world of colour which has a life of it’s own – ambient, turbulent, vibrant, but which, because of an underlying balance, results, like the people it infiltrates, in a final harmonious whole. It is about tensions and balance. Hopefully, other satirical elements complete the picture.