Provenance:

Purchased from Barry Lett Galleries Auckland 1972

Fletcher Trust Collection

Exhibited:

Paintings 1971-2, Barry Lett Galleries, Auckland 1972

Geoff Thornley has been described by Michael Dunn as One of the most committed of the younger abstract painters working in New Zealand. He studied at Elam School of Art 1960-64 graduating with a B.F.A. Initially his painting was figurative but by the early 1970s he had evolved an abstract style which demonstrated an interest in building up layers of colour which was to be one of the hallmarks of his art in later decades. This work is the most minimal of three Stupa triptychs, the other two being held in the collections of the Te Papa and the Govett Brewster Gallery, New Plymouth. The artist regards these works produced on a full sheet of Steinbach paper ( the largest available paper size ) as signatures of my beginnings in which he treated the surface as a vessel to be filled or as a void to be painted around using a pure watercolour technique. The title Stupa derives from a mound form found in Indian architecture, which was used to mark out the sacred site on which a temple was to be built. This mound dominates each of the three works.