C. Morey de Morand
1944 - 2022

Born in Paris in 1944, Colette Morey de Morand trained in painting and printmaking in New Zealand in the 1960s. A dedicated abstractionist, she created an exceptionally rich body of painting. Many of her works featured hard edges, abstract lines, and geometric compositions in a vein not dissimilar to the work of American painter Peter Halley. Though she was equally adept at creating gestural works, such as the three works in Revisiting Modernism. These works rely on gesture, contrast, and layering, rather than overtly linear compositional frameworks. In these works, one can see de Morand’s highly evolved aesthetic sensibility and lightness of touch. Painted in gouache, these works make the most of the medium, employing both watery effects and defined brushstrokes. In these contrasting application methods, de Morand has created another method of generating highly sophisticated abstract compositions.