19 Facts About Lois White

Anna Lois White, known in the art world as Lois White, was a New Zealand painter of the modernist school.

Lois White taught at the Elam Art School of the University of Auckland from 1927 until 1963.

Lois White's family were middle-class, and her father, Arthur Herbert White, was an Auckland architect.

Lois White's mother, Annie White, was a notable member of the Mount Albert Methodist church.

Lois White's family played a key role in fostering the growth and progress of Methodism in the Mount Albert and Mount Roskill boroughs of Auckland.

Lois White attended Epsom Girls' Grammar School from 1919 to 1922, excelling at all subjects.

Lois White was the top competitive swimmer at her school, winning every race for Upper School Champion.

Lois White credited Fisher as one of her strongest influences, maintaining that he inspired her use of painting and design as a means of expressing ideas.

Lois White went on her first overseas trip in 1960, travelling Europe extensively with her friend, Ida Eise, for several months.

In 1928, Lois White graduated from Elam and became a part-time tutor at the school, teaching the junior drawing classes.

Lois White would continue to live at home with her mother and sister, Gwen, in order to provide financial support.

From 1934, Lois White was a full-time teacher at Elam, keeping this position until her retirement in January 1963.

Lois White was asked to settle her superannuation entitlements and take early retirement.

Lois White soon realised that they disagreed on the use of colour in painting, with Lois White affirming that disharmonious, clashing colours must be used when depicting disturbing ideas rather than achieving beautiful colour harmonies that Weeks was known to produce.

Lois White encouraged her students to pay careful attention to how they composed their figures.

Thematically, many of Lois White's works have been recognized as progressive social activism, including her painting Success, which shows a man waving a money bag over a hungry family, and her painting War Makers exhibited between the World Wars, which shows prosperous older, powerful figures mocking a young soldier.

Indeed, Lois White considered herself a socialist as she was passionate about current social injustices.

Lois White was one of the founders of the New Group in 1948, a somewhat conservative group of artists concentrating on traditional form and draughtsmanship, somewhat in opposition to the contemporary younger artists of The Group who were pursuing modernist and abstract forms.

Lois White continued to be viewed as a relatively conservative artist, even in her own opinion, until her work was reappraised through solo exhibitions in 1977 and, after her death, in 1994.