Paratene Matchitt (1933–2021)

Paratene Temokopuorongo Matchitt was born in Tokomaru Bay on 10 August 1933. Of Te Whānau-ā- Apanui, Te Whakatōhea and Ngāti Porou descent, he was a leading figure in contemporary Māori art for over five decades and a pioneer in the development of both Māori modernism and contemporary Māori art.

As one of the Taiapa/Tovey generation, recruited by the charismatic art educationalist Gordon Tovey, and taught and influenced by legendary tohunga whakairo Pine Taiapa, Matchitt was key to the development of Māori art education. Handpicked as a specialist Māori arts and crafts advisor in 1957, he, alongside his art specialist contemporaries, ensured Māori art had a central place in New Zealand’s mainstream classrooms from the early 1960s. Matchitt became one of the founding generation of the Māori modernists who, like many of those art advisors, was not only involved with arts education, but also a practising artist encouraged by Tovey to cultivate his own research