Ralph Hotere was born on 11 August 1931 in Mitimiti, Northland. He was a New Zealand artist and is widely regarded as one of New Zealand's most important artists. In 1994 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Otago and in 2003 received an Icon Award from the Arts Foundation of New Zealand. Hotere received his secondary education at Hato Petera College, Auckland, where he studied from 1946 to 1949.
He moved to Dunedin in 1952, where he studied at Dunedin School of Art, part of King Edward Technical College. During the later 1950s, he worked as a schools art advisor for the Education Department in the Bay of Islands. From 1968, Hotere began the series of works with which he is best known, the Black Paintings. In these works, black is used almost exclusively.
In some works, strips of colour are placed against stark black backgrounds in a style reminiscent of Barnett Newman. In other black paintings, stark simple crosses appear in the gloom, black on black. Though minimalist, the works, as with those of most good abstractionists, have a redolent poetry of their own. The simple markings speak of transcendence, of religion, or peace.
The themes of the black paintings extended to later works, notably the colossal Black Phoenix (1984–88), constructed out of the burnt remains of a fishing boat. Politics were entwined in the subject matter of Hotere's art from an early stage. Along with black painting series he was working on political works.
Hotere was vocal in his opposition, and produced the Aramoana series of paintings. He produced series protesting against a controversial rugby tour by New Zealand of apartheid-era South Africa in 1981, and the sinking of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior in 1985.
A documentary film of the artist's life and work, Hotere, was released by Paradise Films in 2001, in association with Creative New Zealand and the New Zealand Film Commission, written and directed by Merata Mita. Hotere Garden Oputae is a graden in New Zealand named under him which features sculptures of his work and other famous artists of New Zealand.