Painting No. 1

Gordon Walters made his first studies using the koru motif in 1956. Painting No. 1, with its two clusters of black-and-white koru forms, reflects the influence of Māori kōwhaiwhai, tā moko and Oceanic art in general. To this, Walters added his sophisticated understanding of geometric abstraction, with its ideas of clarity and structure, interest in the relationship of figure and ground, and the need for precision. Walters’s koru paintings are a meeting of Polynesian and European art traditions, in which the value of each is upheld.

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