DON PEEBLES
1922-2010, New ZealandA pioneer of abstraction in post-war New Zealand, Peebles attended the Wellington Technical School of Art (1947-50) and the Julian Aston School in Sydney (1951-1953), and was mentored by Victor Pasmore in London (1960-63), who emphasised that paintings existed independent of realist conventions as aesthetic objects in space, constructed with real materials.
From 1967 Peebles constructed geometric relief paintings, affirming this ideology. However, from the early 1970s he reconsidered his philosophies, developing an iconography that has remained fundamental to his practice, using un-stretched canvases and constructing organic and painterly surfaces. He maintained that it was only in the 1970s when he had absorbed the influences of Cézanne and Victor Pasmore that he finally achieved pure abstraction.
From 1965 to 1986 Peebles was a senior lecturer in painting at the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts, Christchurch, New Zealand. Don Peebles is represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of New Zealand - Te Papa Tongarewa, the Christchurch Art Gallery, the Auckland Art Gallery and many significant private collections.
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