ERIC LEE-JOHNSON
An important and early exponent of modernism in New Zealand, Lee-Johnson is recognised for his slightly surreal landscape paintings and photography from the 1950s and 1960s.
He studied at the Elam School of Arts in Auckland in the mid 1920s and was a commercial artist in Auckland until 1930 when he went to London, worked in advertising and attended the London Central School of Arts and Crafts. His work was influenced by typography, graphics and poster design in Europe at this time.
In 1939 he was back in New Zealand and from 1942 to 1960 he lived in the Coromandel and Hokianga - remote rural areas at that time in New Zealand. A series of works of the architecture of early wooden buildings in these rural areas were part of a romantic movement in New Zealand art at this time. A surrealist vision informed his later works.
Lee-Johnson is represented in public galleries and the Hocken and Turnbull Libraries of New Zealand and a retrospective exhibition of his art toured New Zealand in 1981-82.
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