CHARLES TOLE

In the late 1940s and 1950s, Charles Tole’s painting made an important contribution to an emerging modern movement in New Zealand centred in the main commercial city of Auckland. Tole was largely self-taught, receiving limited tuition from his brother John Tole (1890-1967) and painter John Weeks. He was an active member of the Auckland Society of Artists and the independent Thornhill Art Group, which also included Helen Brown. Like many in this circle, his experience of modernism was limited to reproductions in art publications. Influenced by Weeks, he developed a Cubist treatment of urban and industrial scenes, characterised by geometric forms and overlapping transparent planes. However, his choice of subject, idiosyncratic high-key colours and essentially one-point perspective, revealed a local response to Cubism. Yet in spite of Tole’s ‘misinterpretation’ of Picasso’s treatment of space, his unique practice has deservedly received serious consideration over the past decade. Tole has work in the collection of the Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand.