YOUNG SCULPTOR WINS £1000 SCHOLARSHIP

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 484, 1 October 1948, Page 7

YOUNG SCULPTOR WINS £1000 SCHOLARSHIP

July The Listener drew attention to a_ travelling scholarship in art valued at £1,000, which was to be awarded annually by the Association of New Zealand Art Societies. Applications closed on Septembér 1, and the decision of the judging committee has now been announced. The first annual award of this scholarship goes to William Robert Allen, of . Wellington, whose work was selected from 16 entries from all parts of the ‘Dominion. The judges were artists of high repute drawn from all the major New Zealand ‘Art. Societies, — we A feature of the award is that it enables "the successful artist to choose his place of study abroad, and W. R. Allen proposes to study at the Royal College of Art, London, for two years. At present he is a sculpture student at the School of Art, Canterbury University College, and he intends to

continue his work in the field of sculpture and ceramics. ‘\ He went to primary school in Wellington and then took an art course at the Masterton Technical High School. At the age of 18 he joined the army and served in Egypt and Italy with the 27th Machine-Gun Battalion. At the end of the war he studied for two months at the Institute of Art in Florence, on a course organised by ' the British Army and attended by several other New’ Zealanders. After this he was offered a chance to study in London, but he returned home to get married. In 1946 he received a Rehabilitation bursary to study art at Canterbury University College. He hopes to graduate with a Diploma of Fine Arts at the end of this year. -He is now 26 years old and has one. child. Applicants for the award had to submit three examples of original work and three drawings. W. R. Allen submitted a figure composition called Polynesia carved in a_ half-ton block of Oamaru stone and intended to personify the Polynesians’ mythological heritage (a photograph of which -appears on this page), a modelled figure composition for bronze called Unit (right), which consisted of a family group of man, woman and child, the figures being four and a-half feet high, and a modelled life-size head for bronze called Youth (see front cover). C. Lovell-Smith, Director of the School of Art at which W. R. Allen is at present studying, considers him an exceedingly hard-working student of great ability, who should go very far. Under the conditions of the A.N.Z.A.S. Travelling Scholarship, he ‘will return to New Zealand for two years after completing his studies abroad.