Ranui and Untitled by Gordon Walters

Ranui and Untitled are two very early examples of Gordon Walters's famed koru series. Te Papa acquired them from the Paris Family collection in 2008, adding an important dimension to our holdings of this major figure in twentieth century New Zealand art.

Only a small number of these early koru works survive. They were painted when Walters returned to New Zealand in 1953, after spending several years in Europe and Australia. He made a great many small paintings on paper around this time, exploring ideas, testing influences he had absorbed abroad, and storing up possibilities for the future.

The influence of Māori and Oceanic art is obvious in these two works, as are the lessons Walters took from European abstract painters such as Victor Vasarely and Giuseppe Capogrossi. For Walters, this combination offered a solution to 'the dilemma of what to paint in New Zealand'.

The handmade and organic feel of these two works is in marked contrast to the later koru works, which are formally refined and immaculately executed. That said, ideas fundamental to Walters's mature koru paintings – the interplay of positive and negative forms, the ambiguity of figure and ground, the rhythmic pulse of the work – all find expression here.