An experimental expatriate
Born in 1901, Rhona Haszard was a “New Woman” whose social and sexual behaviour was controversial and who wanted to paint innovatively and professionally.
The New Zealand artist’s work and short life is celebrated in a survey exhibition at the Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu. It traces the development of an outstanding New Zealander, from her early beginnings at art school, to style-changing discoveries overseas and on to her experimental prints and mature monumental canvases.
Her family lived in Christchurch, Hokitika and Invercargill. She enrolled at Canterbury College School of Art when she was 18, married a few years later, eloped with another man and in 1926 moved with him to France.
Her work was hung in the Paris Salon of 1927, and in London she took part in a significant exhibitions. In Cairo she was shown at the Galerie Paul, and in Alexandria she had a survey exhibition and a final show that opened the night before she fell mysteriously to her death from the fourth storey of a tower there, at the age of 30.
The exhibition is curated by Dr Joanne Drayton, organised and toured by the Hocken Library, University of Otago.
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