Hermina (Mina) Arndt
Little known in New Zealand, Arndt was one of the few New Zealand women who had travelled and studied extensively abroad. Mina Arndt was born in 1885 at Thurlby Domain, near Queenstown, and in the early 1900s went to London to study with Frank Brangwyn, Stanhope Forbes and George Lambert. While there she met the German engraver Herman Struck, who invited her to study etching with him in Berlin. Here she also became a pupil of Corinth, whose reputation has become consolidated within the last few years. Working through the transitional period from 19th Century realism through impressionism, he came to the characteristic expressionist style of his late landscapes, dating from the 1920's. Corinth worked first in Munich, moving to Berlin, then the artistic centre of Germany, and it was there that Miss Arndt studied under him. Mina Arndt returned to New Zealand at the outbreak of war, though she had spent some time in Paris after her Berlin visit. One of her paintings, "The Model", was exhibited in 1913 at the Artistes Francais. In 1916 she married Mr Manoy and went to live at Motueka, where she continued to paint with occasional outside exhibitions, her style becoming quieter and higher in key until her tragically early death and for thirty-five years after her death, her studio was left just as it had been on the day of her death with many of her sketches, drawings, watercolours and oils still in the room. In the last fifteen years, the recognition of the German painter Lovis Corinth as a major member of the modern movement, has made Arndt's work appear of greater importance, and historically this rediscovery is important to New Zealand art: it was exceptional for a New Zealander of that period to have had such European study and experience. Mina Arndt is represented in most New Zealand public gallery collections.
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