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Sangro Litany by Ralph Hotere

Collection

30 June 2007.

The Sangro series, begun in 1962, is a memorial to Ralph Hotere's brother Jack, who fought with the Maori Battalion and whose grave lies among those of hundreds of other young soldiers at the Sangro River War Cemetery on Italy's Adriatic Coast.

Ralph Hotere Sangro Litany 1979. Acrylic on loose canvas. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, purchased 1981. Reproduced courtesy of Ralph Hotere

Along with many other members of the Maori Battalion, Jack Hotere was killed while attempting to cross the Sangro River in pursuit of retreating German forces during the Second World War.

Hotere visited the cemetery in 1963, and Sangro Litany (1979), expresses both his personal grief and a response to an immense human tragedy. The duality of light and dark, a brilliance of white colour set against a sombre landscape of black, conveys a sense of suffering and remembrance.

A formal arrangement of composition, technique and symbolism articulates a visual statement of emotional clarity.

The word "litany" suggests a religious procession or a service. Instead of listing the names of saints or martyrs, however, Hotere provides only numbers grouped in the form of a Christian cross reminiscent of one of the many tombstones at the cemetery. These white numbers, stencilled on the loose canvas, allude to the respective ages of many of the fallen and highlight their anonymous sacrifice.

The numbers float in dark space, statistical and removed, confronting us in a combination of both beauty and suggested violence. The X-shaped cross beneath can be read as an act of protest, representing anger, cancellation, error and an indictment against war.

The echo of a cross immediately behind it reinforces the sense of frustration and anguish at such loss brought about by war. The lower third of the painting is grey, and the black paint, with touches of rusty red, runs and drips down the surface like tears, blood or rain. This grey, rain-swept Sangro sky laments the dead and provides the background for the stencilled words of an ancient Maori waiata, sung to call for the return of those who have died on foreign soil.

Hasten to the great distance
Hasten to the long distance
Hasten to the far distance
They have fallen by violence
They were killed.

This invocation of numbers and words forms an abstracted landscape of human history. The elegiac use of black also connotes a sense of infinity and limitless potential, redemption and peace, order out of chaos.

Sangro Litany is one of a significant number of Hotere's works held at the Christchurch Art Gallery. Acquired over 32 years, beginning in 1969, they are an interesting commentary on the progress of one of New Zealand's most significant senior artists.

Two others begun at the same time as the Sangro series, the Polaris and Algerian series, directly protest against political issues such as the Cuban missile crisis and French opposition to Algerian independence.

Hotere was born at Mitimiti, north of the Hokianaga in 1931. He lived and worked in Europe from 1961 to 1965, this time abroad being reflected in his semi-abstract style, as is the work of international artists such as Ad Reinhardt, Barnett Newman and Russian Suprematist painter Kasimir Malevich. His paintings from this time (including the Sangro series) reveal a minimalist aesthetic.

Hotere has consistently created challenging art works, his use of language and signs allowing for multiple meanings and readings. Tension and resonance reside in the surfaces of this work, inviting the viewer to perceive and join the artist in his acknowledgment and mourning for the dead. He lives and works at Port Chalmers near Dunedin.

Jennifer Hay

Related reading: Ralph Hotere

Collection

Ralph Hotere Sangro Litany

In 1962 Ralph Hotere visited his brother’s grave in the Sangro River War Cemetery in Italy. While there, he copied from headstones the ages of the Maori Battalion soldiers who, like his brother Jack, were killed while attempting to cross the Sangro River in late 1943, during World War II. Hotere has formed the numbers into a Greek cross, with a large ‘X’ shape ‘crossing’ out the space beneath them. Together, these images suggest both a private requiem and a public protest at the futility of war.

Across the bottom of the canvas, Hotere has stencilled phrases from an ancient Maori chant that calls for the return of the godwit – a symbol for the spirits of the dead – to familiar shores. The paint runs and falls like rain, blood or tears.

Hotere was born in Taikarawa, Northland, and was widely regarded as one of New Zealand’s greatest artists. He is represented in public and private collections throughout New Zealand. He lived in Port Chalmers, near Dunedin, where he died in 2013.

Collection

Ralph Hotere 1984 No. 9

Ralph Hotere made his first ‘Polaris’ works in London in 1962, as the world teetered on the brink of war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The UGM-27 Polaris was the United States Navy’s first nuclear-armed ballistic missile, launched from an attack submarine. In late 1983 / early 1984, with nuclear-powered US ships visiting Aotearoa New Zealand as part of the ANZUS alliance, and the controversial US policy to “neither confirm nor deny” whether they carried nuclear weapons, Hotere returned to this subject with a new sense of urgency. He worked with sheets of stainless steel – rumoured to have been ‘repurposed’ from a Fisher & Paykel factory truck – taking to them with a buffer, grinder and blowtorch to create ravaged surfaces that thrummed with violence. In 1984 No. 9, a missile-shaped form surges up across a delicately scorched paper sheet, countered by Hotere’s ragged, but forceful X. The reversed writing, reflective steel and weathered frame (made by Hotere’s friend, Christchurch artist Roger Hickin) make this ‘painting’ seem more like a mirror – a reflection of our actions and their consequences. (Te Wheke: Pathways Across Oceania, 2021)