Valerie Olga Heinz

1928- 2022

A Retrospective of Treasures

02 April – 12 April

Artist and teacher, Valerie Heinz (1928 – 2022), belongs to the generation of women artists from the 1920s to late 1960s, who graduated from New Zealand’s schools of fine arts with a given understanding that they were graduates from a ‘finishing school,’ – trained to become teachers rather than at the beginning of professional careers as practicing artists.[i]

For Heinz, this encompassed a professional and active engagement with the visual arts over 70 years, complemented and compromised to a certain extent, over 28 years as a secondary school teacher. Interviewed by journalist Anna Dunbar in 2000, Heinz reflected that it was much harder for women painters to make a stand in those days: ‘Looking back I wish I had been bold enough to take more time off…. It also seemed my male colleagues could somehow still manage to produce enough work to hold solo exhibitions every few years…. I feel now as if I am back to knowing what I want to do… [and] I am raring to go.’[ii]

Valerie Heinz was born in Greymouth and sustained an important relationship throughout her life with the West Coast’s flora and fauna and its rain forests. Unlike many Canterbury painters, (Rita Angus or Doris Lusk for example), whose focus was on a wider view grounded in the notion of New Zealand’s strong Pacific light, Heinz’ response to the landscape was more intimate, all-embracing and about the presence of humanity being in the land.

She was committed to the human figure as a ‘powerful symbol’, and stated:

‘I have never wanted to paint the forest from a distance, but as though the mud was beneath my boots and the foliage was dripping from above.’[iii]

Attending Canterbury College School of Art from 1942 and graduating in 1948, Heinz was acknowledged as an artist of merit in 1945 as the recipient of the School’s annual Louise Lonsdale Award. Following her graduation, she sought out further professional study, including textile design, life painting and composition over two and a half years at the Regent Street Polytechnic in London. Describing her studies as ‘not very different from Canterbury College’, she also qualified this observation, observing that art students in Britain and Europe had better opportunities to study and practice as professional artists.[iv] Heinz sustained her commitment to the arts throughout this period, returning to Great Britain in 1954 to study European art and architecture, travelling to Holland, Germany, Denmark and Italy, where she sought out murals and wall paintings in churches in Florence.[v]

In 1957, Heinz was appointed head of the art department at Christchurch Girls High school. Acknowledging the significance of this commitment, like many of her contemporaries, she was aware that it compromised her capacity to sustain her arts practice, yet as a serious artist she actively maintained her presence as a contemporary painter worthy of attention. She was the recipient of the Special Prize in the ‘prestigious’ contemporary Hays Art Competition in 1962[vi] and in March 1965, publicly singled out for her painting, publicly acknowledged for her innovative works in the Canterbury Society of Arts’ Annual exhibition in 1965.[vii]

Heinz exhibited widely in the art societies’ exhibitions in Christchurch, Wellington, Auckland, Dunedin and Invercargill, only taking a year’s leave from Christchurch Girls’ High School in 1962 to paint full-time. In addition, she also established a contemporary art collection for Christchurch Girls High School, (unusual at this time in any school in New Zealand), it initially included a contemporary sculpture by Ria Bancroft, The Unicyclist and a ceramic plate by internationally renowned potter, Shoji Hamada.[viii]

As both teacher and artist, Heinz was also widely engaged in public debate and commentary, highlighting issues of importance to the arts and their wider context in architecture, community spaces and Christchurch’s relationships with the arts, as an advocate in public organisations that included the Christchurch Civic Trust and Sydenham Heritage Trust Boards.

Also a regular contributor to the ‘letters to the editor’ in The Press, a letter from Heinz in 1982 championed the sincerity of Colin McCahon’s paintings. She commented: ‘Readers have been misled by the apparent simplicity of the McCahon paintings… [they are] deceiving in their simplicity… works of art are concerned not only with the description of observed or imaginary shapes but also the relationships between those shapes and other elements including colour, tone and texture. In McCahon’s work these are very subtle… with a delight and curiosity. ’[ix]

In 1988 she also responded to public debate over a proposal for an observation tower to be located in Victoria Square. Heinz argued a case for respecting public spaces as sites for reflection and rest: ‘Victoria Square is a space which has always been a welcome relief from the commercial activity and the heavier traffic of the surrounding inner-city streets… the placing of the tower would alter its character irrevocably. A tower by definition is meant to dominate. It could not be ignored!…’[x]

Holding a solo exhibition at the Arts Centre of Christchurch in 1997, Heinz described her new paintings of the figure and the influence of social realism from her time in England in the early 1950s. She detailed her favourite subjects, her figures and their environment: ‘ Where light shines through translucent leaves…, where tangled roots form patterns and disappear among the shadows, these and the incongruity of the shapes and colours of the humans who enter the forest are the subjects of these paintings’ [xi]

Dr. Warren Feeney

[i]  Anne Kirker, New Zealand Woman Artists, Reed Methuen, 1986, page 19

[ii] Valerie Heinz interviewed by Anna Dunbar, ‘Half Century’, The Press, 8 March 2000, page 39

[iii] The Press, 22 July 1971, page 14 and interview, Anna Dunbar

[iv] The Press, 4 March 1957, page 2

[v] ibid

[vi] The Press, Hays Art Prize, 28 Feb 1962, page 15

[vii] The Press, 31 March 1965 page 14

[viii] Barbara Peddie, Christchurch Girls’ High School 1877 – 1977, published by the Christchurch High School Girls’ Association 1977, page 195

[ix] The Press, Letters to the Editor, 14 September 1982, page 20

[x]    The Press, 18 March, 1988, page 10.

[xi] The Press, 5 March 1997, exhibition at the Arts Centre.   8 – 16 March.

RECORD OF WORK 

Valerie Olga Heinz Dip. Fine Arts, N.Z. Born 7 January 1928, Greymouth 

Canterbury College School of Art 

Awarded Louise Lonsdale Prize for junior life work 

Studied 1944-1948 

1944 

1954-1956 

Studied at the then Art School, the London Polytechnic, Regent St. Studied under Norman Blamey. 

1957 – 1986 

Taught at Christchurch Girls‘ High School. Became head of Art Department 

Work in Public Collections: 

Robert McDougall Art Gallery, Anderson Park Gallery – Invercargill, Canterbury Society of Arts coll. 

1963 

Exhibitions 

Award, Hay Competition, Christchurch 

1950 

Canterbury Centennial Living Artists Exhibition 

Between 1949 and 1969 exhibited in Society of Arts annual exhibition, Christchurch, Wellington, Dunedin, Invercargill. 

Between 1975-1993 Exhibited in invitation group exhibitions at the C.S.A. 

1975 

organised by C.S.A. and others. 

Exhibited in the Christchurch–Kurashiki (sister city) exhibition in Japan. 

Solo Exhibitions 

1962 

C.S.A. Gallery 

1972 

C.S.A. Gallery 

1974 

C.S.A. Gallery 

1979 

C.S.A. Gallery 

1987 

C.S.A. Gallery 

1991 

Ritchies Gallery, Christchurch 

1993 

C.S.A. Gallery 

1997 

Rainforest Paintings 

Lovell–Smith Room 

1999 

Crazy City, Quiet Forest 

Lovell–Smith Room 

2000 

“Fifty Years of Painting” 

Lovell–Smith Room 

Retrospective exhibition of paintings still in my possession 

Recent Group Exhibitions 

1993 

1993 

2002 

One Hundred Years of Canterbury Women’s Artmaking (“White Camellias Exhibition“) 

Robert McDougall Art Gallery, Christchurch 

Women’s Lives Exhibition 

Robert McDougall Art Annex, Christchurch 

Anderson Park Gallery Invercargill (Featured artist).