Robert Ellis Kuaira

Robert Ellis was born in England in 1929. He studied at the Northampton School of Art from 1944 to 1947, and the Royal College of Art in London from 1949 to 1953, gaining a rich depth of knowledge that was to inform his lifelong pursuit of painting. In the two years between, he completed national service with the photographic unit of the Royal Air Force Bomber Command – an experience that likely informed the aerial views evident in his later work.

Ellis migrated to New Zealand in the 1950s and took up a lecturing role at Elam School of Fine Arts. He taught there for decades, influencing many of the significant artists that emerged from the esteemed art school. He lived in Birkenhead on Auckland’s North Shore, in close proximity to the rapidly developing motorway and harbour bridge project. This became part of his daily experience and shaped his most distinctive painting motif – stylised impressions of the motorway.

In his art practice, Ellis created a unique artistic language that sits somewhere between abstraction and representational painting. It includes elements of the traditional drafting and image production techniques he had learned in England, along with fresh approaches to gestural painting and scumbling.

Kuaira 12 was made in 1978. It demonstrates the core elements of Ellis’s practice, showing the combination of skill and vision that made him an artist of enduring significance. The work features thickly layered oil paint, which gives the viewer a visceral sense of the painting. This work resonates with the motorway paintings, though subtly differs.

Ellis is a major national figure in modernist painting. His work is held in the highest esteem by private and institutional collectors alike. Kuaira 12 shows another aspect of his storied artistic oeuvre.