The apparent similarities between Ralph Hotere and Ad Reinhardt's work might grab viewers first but it is the differences that are significant.
Te Papa is about to exhibit works by both the influential artists in Te Papa's sixth season of art exhibition, Nga Toi.
''There has been an ongoing conversation about the work of the two artists for years, so to finally exhibit them alongside each other is incredibly exciting,'' Te Papa curator of modern art Chelsea Nichols said.
''This is a minimalistic and understated show - but it is a very important moment in New Zealand art history.''
Both artists are seen as influential - Hotere was one of New Zealand greatest modern artists while Reinhardt took abstract and minimalism to the extreme as one of the greatest artists of the 1950s and 1960s in America.
The six works from Hotere, who was Dunedin based for much of his later life, are part of Te Papa's collection while the prints of Reinhardt's work - his most famous series, the Black Paintings (1954-67) are all uniform, five-foot (1.52m) squares - are recent acquisitions by the museum.
The series of prints Te Papa recently acquired are called “10 Screenprints” from 1966. They are an experiment in printmaking that Reinhardt undertook toward the end of his life, which took off his most famous painting motif, the Black Square. None of the prints are pure black squares, however – they play with subtle tone and shape, and attempt to completely remove the hand of the artist.
Nichols had been on the ''lookout'' for works by Reinhardt since joining the museum three years ago.
She finally discovered the series of 10 ''pristine'' screen prints from 1965 in New York and the museum's acquisition department gave the go ahead after a through investigation.
Curator and writer Ian Wedde, who was also a friend of Hotere, said the story of the connection between the two artists was that Hotere was intending to go to a lecture of Reinhardt's in London in 1961 but did not make it.
However, he did use Reinhardt's lecture text in one of his catalogues.
''Ralph loved Reinhardt's paintings and greatly admired them.
''You could not say he influenced Ralph but he did provide him with a point of entry for his painting, a place to go into a kind of painting.
''He was a kind of doorway for Ralph to move and do something immensely important for the rest of his life.''
While the works of both artists - being almost completely black - might appear to resemble each other, it was the differences that were interesting, he said.
''Ralph made paintings on occasion that were either extremely dark or appear to be almost completely black, but almost never are. They appear to resemble works by Ad Reinhardt from the mid-'50s.''
However, Reinhardt's 1955-56 works were very dark and in some cases almost completely black, but did contain very carefully proportioned shapes, often in a very dark blue making it almost impossible to see the distinguishing shapes.
''They're minimilist paintings and paintings that have a very clear sense of ghost structures in them.''
In contrast, one of Hotere's paintings in the exhibition Black Painting XIII, from Malady a poem by Bill Manhire painted in 1970, included stencilled words and black spraypaint.
''So you can hardly say it's a completely black empty painting - in that way it greatly exceeds the abstraction of Reinhardt.''
Reinhardt was much more rigorous in how he simplified what he painted and the darkness of his paintings, while Hotere always did something a bit different.
In another series of works from 1968-70, Hotere used ''very beautiful black lacquer'' surfaces marked with a cross in a primary colour.
''Known as Ralph's black paintings, they contain an element of the cross. They look like completely abstract paintings but to me they contain just that trace of a story, that trace of history.''
That was an important difference between the two - they did different things with that darkness, he said.
Hotere's works contained a sense of story and history compared to Reinhardt and also a political resonance.
For Reinhardt, black is without a particular significance socially or historically, except in terms of art history.
In Hotere's case, while he knew the history, the colour black inevitably contained a political hint and a resonance as an artist ''of colour''.
''When he [Reinhardt] painted the colour black it meant nothing more than the colour black, simple.''
Hotere also loved the colour black and did paint very political paintings and was a very strong political person. And many protest paintings included black,
''The colour black for Ralph had a bit more going for it than just being a blank empty abstract surface.''
Another difference was that Reinhardt wrote prolifically about his work while Hotere kept his ''mouth shut''.
''He did not like to comment on his work.''
Permission was not granted for the Otago Daily Times to publish images of Reinhardt's work.
