For images of Gretchen Albrecht’s paintings, visit her website:
GRETCHEN ALBRECHT, born 1943 in Auckland
Gretchen Albrecht is one of this country’s most respected senior abstract painters. She graduated DFA (Honours in Printmaking) from Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland in 1964, and was the Frances Hodgkins Fellow at Otago University in 1981. While her drawings and paintings of the 1960’s were mainly figurative, during the next decade Albrecht explored different applications of paint on canvas, creating large, stained canvases of singing colour that took their inspiration from the landscape and gardens. Subsequent works using geometric forms and semi-circles within rectangular canvases gradually evolved into her signature hemispheres of the 1980’s, with their rich colours initially gated by the central divide and later sweeping.across it. In the 1990’s she had taken the oval as her ground in innovative paintings that at times incorporated the rectangular form. In 2002 a retrospective exhibition of Albrecht’s work was held to great acclaim at the Auckland Art Gallery, and in 2005 a retrospective exhibition of oval and hemisphere paintings and works on paper was shown at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery and the City Gallery in Wellington. In her 2005 exhibition at the Mark Hutchins Gallery, Albrecht exhibited paintings from the 1980’s, 1990’s and 2000’s alongside recent stainless steel sculptures.
LINKS
Gretchen Albrecht images of prints and information on website of PG Gallery 192, Christchurch
Gretchen Albrecht on Adam Art Gallery Te Pataka Toi website
Gretchen Albrecht 2002 exhibition ‘Illuminations’ at Auckland Art Gallery
Gretchen Albrecht works held by the Auckland Art Gallery
Gretchen Albrecht video ‘Reflections’ by NZ on Screen
Gretchen Albrecht Arts Foundation website, 2007
Gretchen Albrecht 2014 exhibition at Two Rooms Gallery
Gretchen Albrecht Real Art Roadshow website
DEALERS
PG Gallery 192, Christchurch
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Two Hundred Years of New Zealand Painting, Gil Docking, Reed, 1971 and enlarged edition, Bateman, 1990
New Zealand Paintings since 1960: A Study in Themes, Peter Cape, Collins, 1979
Contemporary New Zealand Painters, Jim and Mary Barr and Marti Friedlander, Alister Taylor, 1980
Art New Zealand 26 ‘Gretchen Albrecht, The Early Years’, Priscilla Pitts, 1983
Forty Modern New Zealand Paintings, Francis Pound, Penguin, 1985
Art New Zealand 38 ‘Albrecht’s Hemispheres – The realms of connotation’, Francis Pound, 1986
New Zealand Art, A Modern Perspective, Elva Bett, Reed Methuen, 1986
AFTERnature: A Survey – 23 Years, with essays by Linda Gill & Francis Pound, The Sarjeant Gallery, Wanganui, 1986
Women and the Arts in New Zealand, Forty Works: 1936-86, Elizabeth Eastmond and Merimeri Penfold, Penguin, 1986
New Zealand Women Artists, Anne Kirker, Reed Methuen, 1986
Gretchen Albrecht (Contemporary New Zealand Artists Series), Linda Gill, Random Century, 1991
A Concise History of New Zealand Painting, Michael Dunn, Bateman, 1991
Distance Looks Our Way: 10 Artists from New Zealand, pub. Distance Looks Our Way Trust, 1992
Contemporary New Zealand Art 2, Elizabeth Caughey and John Gow, Bateman, 1999
Gretchen Albrecht Illuminations, Ron Brownson, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki/Godwit Press, 2002 (catalogue)