Colin McCahon: There is Only One Direction, Vol. I 1919-1959

Author(s): Peter Simpson

Art & Design

Colin McCahon (1919–1987) was New Zealand’s greatest twentieth-century artist. Through landscapes, biblical paintings and abstraction, the introduction of words and Māori motifs, McCahon’s work came to define a distinctly New Zealand modernist idiom. Collected and exhibited extensively in Australasia and Europe, McCahon’s work has not been assessed as a whole for thirty-five years. In the first of two richly-illustrated volumes, written in an accessible style and published to coincide with the centenary of Colin McCahon’s birth, leading McCahon scholar, writer and curator Peter Simpson chronicles the evolution of McCahon’s work. Simpson has enjoyed unprecedented access to McCahon’s extensive correspondence with friends, family, dealers, patrons and others. This material enables us to begin to understand McCahon’s work as the artist himself conceived it. Each volume includes over three hundred illustrations in colour, with a generous selection of reproductions of McCahon’s work (many never previously published), plus photographs, catalogue covers, facsimiles and other illustrative material. Along with Colin McCahon: Is this the Promised Land? Vol.2 1960-1987, this will be the definitive work on New Zealand’s leading artist for many years to come.


Product Information

Longisted for the Ockham NZ Book Awards - Illustrated Non-Fiction Award 2020

General Fields

  • : 9781869408954
  • : Auckland University Press
  • : Auckland University Press
  • : 2.28611
  • : September 2019
  • : ---length:- '11.25'width:- '9.25'units:- Inches
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Peter Simpson
  • : Paperback
  • : Paperback
  • : English
  • : English
  • : 759.993
  • : 759.993
  • : near fine
  • : near fine
  • : 360
  • : 360