Colin McCahon : There is Only One Direction : Vol 1 1919-1959

An extraordinary two-volume work chronicling forty-five years of painting by our most important artist, Colin McCahon.Colin McCahon (19191987) was New Zealand's greatest twentieth-century artist. Through landscapes, biblical paintings and abstraction, the introduction of words and Maori 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 Dr Peter Simpson chronicles the evolution of the artists work over McCahon'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 beginto 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 McCahons work (many never previously published), plus photographs, catalogue covers, facsimiles and other illustrative material.

This will be the definitive work on New Zealand's leading artist for many years to come.