Colin McCahon

For the first time in nearly 40 years, a solo exhibition of Colin McCahon's work for sale will be shown in Dunedin.

Brett McDowell gallery is presenting a show of works that spans from McCahon’s early water colours of the Nelson area in the late 1930s through landscapes, religious works and the increasingly symbolic works of the mid 1970s.

Although born in 1919 in Timaru, McCahon is one of Dunedin’s better known sons, educated and spending most of his early years there. He attended Otago Boys High School and then King Edward Art School, where he studied with tutor and artist RN Field and was influenced by the paintings of former student, Toss Woollaston.

Famously it was a view over the Taieri plain that McCahon saw something that informed and affected much of his future work. He wrote “there was a landscape of splendour and order and peace…My work has largely been to communicate this vision and to invent the way to see it”.

Leaving during the war years, McCahon retained strong ties to Dunedin, marrying fellow artist Anne Hamblett the daughter of local Archdeacon WA Hamblett and retaining life- long friendships with supporters and patrons Rodney Kennedy and Charles Brasch amongst others. Since his death in 1987, McCahon has come to be heralded as New Zealand’s most significant visual artist.

Almost a mini retrospective, McCahon’s progression of subject matter, technique, materials and themes is revealed in this exhibition.