,'' which Angus made in 1936, has been called "one of the iconic images of 20th-century New Zealand painting". Among Angus' influences were
Byzantine art and
cubism. a response to New Zealand's distinctive clear lighting. Her landscapes came in a time when many people were concerned to create a distinctly New Zealand style, but Angus herself was not interested in defining a national style so much as her own style. Her paintings are clear, hard-edged and sharply defined. In the 1930s and 1940s she painted scenes of
Canterbury and
Otago. One of the most famous of these is
Cass (1936) in which she portrayed the bare emptiness of the Canterbury landscape using simplified forms and mostly unblended colours arranged in sections in a style remiscent of
poster art.
Cass was voted New Zealand's most-loved painting in a 2006 television poll. For a while, she lived next to the artist
Leo Bensemann. Their adjacent flats became something of a hub of the local art scene and it is said that they spurred each other on in their art. It has been stated that Angus produced some of her finest pieces during this time including many portraits. She also produced comic art, signed with the name
Rita Cook. Angus' pacifist beliefs can be seen in her art of the 1940s, when she avoided any kind of war work. Angus stated, "As an artist it is my work to create life and not to destroy it." She created three goddess images symbolising peace of which "Rutu" is the most well known. In 1958, she won a New Zealand Art Societies' Fellowship and travelled to
London to study at the
Chelsea School of Art and the
Institute of Contemporary Arts. She also visited
Scotland and Europe and studied modern and traditional European art. Four of Angus's paintings were featured on a set of postage stamps issued by
New Zealand Post in 1983 to mark the 75th anniversary of the artist's birth. ==Exhibitions==