Growth

Rita Angus named this painting Growth, alluding to the natural world that inspired it. ‘I just wanted the feeling of something sprouting,’ she said. Against a grid, a series of flower-like shapes thrust upwards and burst open.

Growth, with its simple geometric forms, is one of Angus’s most abstract pictures. She painted it late in life, when she was 61, and commented that ‘a lot of thought’ had gone into it.

The work was included in an exhibition that Angus held at Victoria University in 1968. Art historian Antony Murray-Oliver described Angus’s work as ‘youthful and exciting, simple but subtle. It repays thoughtful study.’