John Blackburn British, 1932-2022
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John BlackburnConcord, 2011Oil & mixed media on paper64 x 90 cm -
John BlackburnForms on a Blue Plain, 2019Oil & mixed media on canvas75 x 103 cm
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John BlackburnThree Trees with Two Forms, 2022Mixed media on canvas panel60.5 x 81.5 cm
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John BlackburnGreen Sails, 2021mixed media on canvas board36 x 46 cm
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John BlackburnThe Apartment, The Mount , 2010Oil & mixed media on canvas mounted on board80 x 50 x 5 cm
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John BlackburnFour Trees with Assorted Cups, 2022Mixed media on canvas mounted on board61 x 122.5 cm
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John BlackburnThe Mount April 2020, 2020Acrylic & mixed media on canvas/board23 x 18 cm
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John BlackburnFrom Green to Yellow, 2021Mixed media on canvas board51 x 61 cm
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John BlackburnThe Cross, 2022Mixed media on canvas/board panels
Triptych84.5 x 179 cm -
John BlackburnIn the Garden, 2021Mixed media canvas board40 x 48 cm
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John BlackburnOrange Form, 2019Oil & mixed media on canvas54 x 75 cm
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John BlackburnAssemblage of Gentle Cups, 2022Mixed media on 6 mm board70.5 x 98.5 cm
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John BlackburnCelebration, 2019Oil & mixed media on canvas94 x 58.5 cm
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John BlackburnHarlequin, 2019Oil & mixed media on canvas59 x 84 cm
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John BlackburnMuriwai Morning, 2014Oil & mixed media on canvas mounted on board76 x 60 cm
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John BlackburnBig Black, 2014Oil & mixed media on canvas mounted on board125 x 125 x 5 cm
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John BlackburnGrey Form with White Square, 2010Oil & mixed media on canvas mounted on board57 x 113 x 5 cm
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John BlackburnGreen Field, 2010Oil & mixed media on canvas mounted on board60 x 50 x 5 cm
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John Blackburn2 Squares, Grey to Left, 2008Oil & mixed media on canvas board45.5 x 61 x 5 cm
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John BlackburnClouds, Trees & Picket Fence, 2022Mixed media on canvas mounted on board61 x 122.5 cm
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John BlackburnThree Patterned Trees with Silver and Pearl Forms Beneath, 2022Mixed media on canvas board59 x 44 cm
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John BlackburnRed Splatter, 2021mixed media on canvas board42 x 59.5 cm
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John BlackburnSage and Grey Forms, 2021Mixed media on canvas board51 x 61 cm
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John BlackburnSunday 14 June, 2020Acrylic & mixed media on canvas/board28 x 35.5 cm
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John BlackburnBlack Zig Zag, 2019Burnt metal & cloth on canvas21.5 x 39.5 cm
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John BlackburnPale blue sky above clustered forms, 2008Oil & mixed media on canvas mounted on board92 x 120 cm
John Blackburn (1932–2022) was a British abstract painter whose work is distinguished by its richly textured surfaces, material experimentation, and emotional intensity. Using layered pigment, wax, and raw, often repurposed materials, he developed a striking visual language that balanced structure and spontaneity.
Blackburn spent a formative decade in New Zealand following his service in the Royal Air Force, producing some of the most radical painting in Auckland during the late 1950s. He was recognised early by Colin McCahon, who selected him for the landmark Ten Auckland Painters exhibition at the Auckland City Art Gallery in 1959. Despite this, his contribution remains largely absent from formal narratives of New Zealand art history. Blackburn returned to England in 1961, where he continued to paint prolifically until 1980. A renewed interest in his practice emerged in the early 2000s when early works acquired by noted British collector Jim Ede (Kettle’s Yard) were rediscovered. This led to significant exhibitions at the Metropole Galleries in 2006 and Osborne Samuel Gallery, London, who represented him until his death.
ARTIS Gallery has represented Blackburn since 2009, presenting annual exhibitions of his work for over sixteen years. Since his passing in 2022, we have continued to work closely with the artist’s family to share his powerful and uncompromising body of work with New Zealand audiences — work that continues to resonate for its raw materiality, lyrical abstraction, and enduring clarity of vision.
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JOHN BLACKBURN
4 - 18 February 2025Read more -
John Blackburn
REMINISCE 27 February - 10 March 2024Read more -
John Blackburn
90 Years 14 - 27 February 2023In June 2022 we celebrated the milestone of John’s 90th birthday and four months ago he sent us a collection of stunning new paintings for his 2023 exhibition. It was whilst those paintings were at the framers in preparation for this exhibition that we received the sad news of John’s passing on October 22nd. Since 2009 John has been a massive supporter of ARTIS Gallery and a valued mentor to our younger artists. We have formed a strong personal friendship with John and Maude. John’s elegant presence at his exhibition openings will be sorely missed. As John said to me in 2017, ‘there’s no point in simply doing what you already know; the important thing is to search for what you don’t know’.Read more -
John Blackburn & Margaret Lovell
An Unbroken Duality 8 - 24 February 2022Art is often a barometer of its time, and the fraught conditions of recent years have informed the content and mood of the work of many artists, including that of the two veteran British abstractionists shown in this exhibition. In her adopted country of New Zealand, sculptor Margaret Lovell reacted to global uncertainties with what she came to realise was a subconscious need to simplify, to pare down her forms in a meditative process in which clarity and strength were constant watchwords. In contrast, during sustained periods of lockdown in both Auckland and at his English home, John Blackburn, always a highly physical painter, felt impelled to work with even greater rawness and immediacy. On the face of it then, divergent energies appear to be operating here, though in fact a closer examination reveals that these artists have much in common.Read more
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John Blackburn
Extended Stay 2 - 18 February 2021‘Extended Stay’, an exhibition of new works by John Blackburn, reflects on the artist’s forced hiatus in New Zealand at the beginning of the Global Covid-19 Pandemic. Blackburn and his...Read more -
John Blackburn + Marian Fountain
Parallel Reflections 11 - 23 February 2020Returning from London for his 11 th exhibition at ARTIS Gallery, it is both apposite and convenient to suggest that John Blackburn’s career has spanned parallel paths both in New...Read more -
John Blackburn & Margaret Lovell
All Fired Up 12 - 25 February 2019Although still going strong at 86, it is both apposite and convenient to propose that John Blackburn’s extraordinary career as a painter is now bookended by fire works. For surely,...Read more -
John Blackburn & Peter Panyoczki
Two Modernists 20 February - 12 March 2018John Blackburn is well known in Britain and New Zealand as an abstract painter of originality and vision. Shapes and applications have reoccured frequently in his works throughout the past decades, but they are always fresh and illuminating, reflecting both order and change – “continually open to experience and reassessment”. Blackburn’s paintings are made up of overlapping layers – each embedded with their own meaning. These contrasting layers interact with each other, creating an euphony of colour, texture and form.Read more
Peter Panyoczki is a highly regarded mixed media artist, working in a hybrid of forms and mediums including painting, sculpture, installation, photography and digital technology. Panyoczki’s work expresses the paradox of communication that refuses to reveal itself by providing information of what it is made of. A common feature in Peter’s works is the presence of texture, be it actual surface texture or the representation thereof. The textured surfaces are evocative, forming notions of one’s past and inner self, or that which has been buried and forgotten.
