Felix Kelly: A Kiwi at Brideshead

Auckland born, Felix Kelly (1914-1994) fled New Zealand as a young man for the bright lights of London. He never returned, but, unlike other New Zealand expatriate painters who quickly removed their homeland from their subject matter, Kelly kept painting an increasingly misremembered New Zealand which with each new work became a more and more fantastical place.

Kelly established himself as a graphic designer in 1930s London before moving seamlessly into stage and interior design in the 1950s. All this time he was also establishing himself as a painter of note. Initially exhibiting alongside Lucian Freud and Julian Trevelyan – and on one occasion Frances Hodgkins – Kelly soon developed a romantic, surreal style entirely his own, and cultivated a rich, upper-class clientele whom he supplied with house portraits, straight or strange as they preferred. In this his career bore a startling resemblance to that of Charles Ryder in the Evelyn Waugh novel, Brideshead Revisited.

Focusing on Kelly’s output until the mid 1960s, the exhibition ranges from paintings to book illustrations, and from cartoons to design for the stage. This body of work shows Kelly as an artist of whimsical imagination and invention. It also adds a new complexity and depth to New Zealand’s art history.

Curated by Dr Don Bassett; developed and toured by Hawke's Bay Museum & Art Gallery, Napier.

Image: A New Zealand Childhood Remembered, 1959-1965, Tempera on board, Private Collection Auckland, Courtesy of Jonathan Grant Galleries

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