Colin McCahon: Is This the Promised Land?: Vol.2 1960-1987

Author(s): Peter Simpson

Art | Autobiography | Abacus Picks - Non-fiction

The second of an extraordinary two-volume work chronicling forty-five years of painting by our most important artist, Colin McCahon. 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 this richly illustrated two-volume work, 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 over the artist’s entire forty-five-year career. 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: There is Only One Direction. Vol 1. 1919-1959, this book will be the definitive work on New Zealand’s leading artist for many years to come.

>>> Must have- NZ leading artist's second volume - publishing now delayed to June 2020<<<


Product Information

Longlisted for the Booksellers Aotearoa New Zealand Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction - Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2021

Peter Simpson is a former associate professor of English at the University of Auckland. He is the author of numerous critically acclaimed books, including Colin McCahon: The Titirangi Years, 1953–1959 (Auckland University Press, 2007) and Bloomsbury South: The Arts in Christchurch 1933–1953 (Auckland University Press, 2016). He has also curated three significant exhibitions of McCahon’s work. He received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement (non-fiction) in 2017.

General Fields

  • : 9781869409081
  • : Auckland University Press
  • : Auckland University Press
  • : April 2020
  • : 8.5cm x 23.5cm
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Peter Simpson
  • : Hardback
  • : English
  • : 759.993
  • : near fine
  • : 400
  • : HB