John Boys Drawbridge was a New Zealand artist, muralist and printmaker.
10 Facts About John Drawbridge
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John Drawbridge was famous for his murals in public places: for the foyer of New Zealand House in London in the 1960s, the Beehive in the 1970s, and for the New Zealand Pavilion at Expo 70 in Japan.
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John Drawbridge was born in the Wellington suburb of Karori and attended the Wellington Teachers College from 1948 to 1949 completing his teacher training the following year in Dunedin.
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Three years later in 1960 John Drawbridge married the sculptor Tanya Ashken who was a student at the Central School of Arts and together they moved to Paris so he could study under SM.
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In 1963 John Drawbridge showed his work at the Redfern Gallery run by Rex Nan Kivell in London.
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John Drawbridge lived at Island Bay in Wellington for over 40 years with his artist wife Tanya Ashken; they had two sons, Tony and Cameron.
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In 2019 Tennent Brown designed a side chapel dedicated to Suzanne Aubert's life and with the John Drawbridge family's help converted John Drawbridge drawing into a stained glass window for the building.
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Douglas Lilburn 8.
In 1949, at the age of 19, John Drawbridge had been invited to produce a water colour record of an ascent of Mount Aspiring by Brian Brake, Douglas Lilburn and James K Baxter the poet to be filmed by the National Film Unit.
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The 45 watercolour and pastel drawings and John Drawbridge's storyboard survived and are now held in the Turnbull Library in Wellington.
10.
Fifty seven years later in 2006 John Drawbridge traveled back to the Matukituki Valley with a film crew, and revisited the Aspiring Hut for the documentary film Aspiring.