Selwyn Wilson, considered a founding figure of Māori modernism, enrolled at the Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland in 1945 and became the first Māori to graduate from a New Zealand art school. Study of a Head (1948) is said to be a portrait of Wilson’s nephew Ponga Pomare Kingi Cherrington at their family homestead in Taumarere. The portrait’s success was confirmed when it won first prize in an Elam School of Art and Design competition in 1948. It would have been notable for its pastel colour palette and brushwork. His early works show the influence of director of the art school, Archibald Fisher, an advocate of form and design who challenged contemporary taste by insisting that painters should comment on life. This shift guided Wilson towards Māori subjectivity. In 1993, he commented, “What I always aimed to give to all students was an awareness of the place where they live ... and an eye for design of all functional things around us”. Study of a Head is the first contemporary Māori artwork to enter any art collection in New Zealand.
This is the first time the work of Selwyn Wilson is presented at Biennale Arte.
—Natasha Conland
