Strangers Arrive

(Hardback)

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Description

From the 1930s through the 1950s, a substantial number of forced migrants refugees from Nazism, displaced people after World War II and escapees from Communist countries arrived in New Zealand from Europe. Among them were an extraordinary group of artists and writers, photographers and architects whose European modernism radically reshaped the arts in this country. In words and pictures, Strangers Arrive tells their story. Ranging across the arts from photographer Irene Koppel to art dealer Kees Hos, architect Imric Porsolt to writer Antigone Kefala, Leonard Bell takes us inside New Zealands bookstores and coffeehouses, studios and galleries to introduce us to a remarkable body of artistic work and to ask key questions. How were migrants received by New Zealanders How did displacement and settlement in New Zealand transform their work How did the arrival of European modernists intersect with the burgeoning nationalist movement in the arts in New Zealand Strangers Arrive introduces us to a talented group of `aliens who were critical catalysts for change in New Zealand culture.

Author Bio

Leonard Bell is associate professor of art history at the University of Auckland. His writings on cross-cultural interactions and representations and the work of travelling, migrant and refugee artists and photographers have been published in New Zealand, Britain, the United States, Australia, Germany and the Czech Republic. He is author of Marti Friedlander (Auckland University Press, 2009), Colonial Constructs: European Images of Maori 18401914 (AUP, 1992) and In Transit: Questions of Home and Belonging in New Zealand Art (2007). He is co-editor of Jewish Lives in New Zealand (2012).