Described as a living icon of New Zealand art, painter Dick Frizzell‘s practice engages with a depiction of the ‘kiwi vernacular’ ranging from landscapes to naive-style still-lifes, roadside signs and abstractions; also utilising kitsch kiwiana icons in his often cartoon-like works.

He is most well-known for his ‘Mickey to Tiki’ and Four-Square Grocer Man series, where he provocatively appropriates and combines Mickey Mouse and tiki symbolism, and the 4-Square man with traditional moko, in pop-art style works.

City Gallery Wellington showed a 1997 survey of his work, ‘Portrait of a Serious Artiste’, highlighting the crossover in his practise between his witty pop studies and his ‘ironic pastiches’ of New Zealand art world tropes, such as regionalist painting.

This work is part of the 1990 sesquicentennial lithograph collection by twenty New Zealand artists, produced by Muka Studio. Frizzell has also created murals for Wellington’s Moore Wilson carpark, as well as larger commissions and sculptures, and commercial ventures, such as wineries.

Dick Frizzell (born 1943, Auckland) graduated in 1964 with honours from Ilam School of Fine Art, University of Christchurch and Auckland Teachers College in 1966, working in advertising from 1967 to 1974 before showing his first solo exhibition in 1976 and touring the USA on a Creative New Zealand grant in 1978. Frizzell taught at Elam School of Fine Art, University of Auckland, was based in Hawkes Bay and is now living and working in Auckland where he is represented by Gow Langsford Gallery. He was awarded a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2004.