Kees Hos

This black and white portrait of printmaker Kees Hos was taken by Steve Rumsey in November 1970. Rumsey took the photograph at the request of Hos, who required a portrait for a job application. In the photograph, Hos looks directly at the camera, his face slightly blurred, while the out-of-focus background creates a pattern of light and dark that echoes the visual contrasts of the dark jacket and tie and light shirt that Hos is wearing.

Gallery owner and printmaker
Kees Hos was an important printmaker in Auckland in the 1950s and 1960s. A Dutch artist who taught at the Hague, Hos and his wife, Tina, immigrated to New Zealand in the early 1950s - part of the postwar Dutch migration that substantially changed art and culture in New Zealand. Opening the New Vision Craft Centre in 1957, the Hoses became leading figures in the promotion of local craft practice, and by the time the New Vision Gallery opened in 1965, they were the leading dealers of applied arts in the country. As well as promoting artists like Theo Schoon and Gordon Walters, Hos worked as a printmaker, stimulating the movement in New Zealand through his own work and the printmaking classes he took at the gallery.

Photographer of the arts
The portrait of Kees Hos is one of a number of photographs of artists that Rumsey produced after 1965 when he established Photo Associates Limited. Hos's New Vision Gallery employed Rumsey to take photographs for their catalogue covers, and this led to an increasing involvement with galleries and artists. Te Papa owns photographs of photographer Theo Schoon, sculptor Alison Duff, and potters Barry Brickell and Len Castle, among others, all taken by Rumsey in both a professional and private capacity. His photographic archive is therefore one of the most comprehensive documentaries of the Auckland pottery and craft scenes in the 1960s and 1970s. His photographs have been reproduced in a number of books, including Artists and Craftsmen in New Zealand by Peter Cape, published in 1969.