Colin McCahon

Colin J. McCahon
A pencil drawing of Colin McCahon by Allan Mollison (2009)
Born	(1919-08-01)1 August 1919 Timaru, Timaru District, New Zealand
Died	27 May 1987(1987-05-27) (aged 67) Auckland, Auckland Region, New Zealand
Resting place	Ashes scattered at Muriwai, Auckland Region, New Zealand
Nationality	New Zealander
Alma mater	Otago Boys' High School
Known for	Painter
Movement	Modernism
Spouse(s)	Anne Hamblett (1915-1993)

Colin John McCahon (1 August 1919 – 27 May 1987) was a prominent New Zealand artist whose work over forty-five years consisted of various styles including: landscape, figuration, abstraction and the overlay of painted text. Along with Toss Woollaston and Rita Angus, McCahon is credited with introducing modernism to New Zealand in the mid twentieth century. He is regarded as New Zealand's most important modern artist, particularly in his landscape work.

McCahon was born in Timaru on 1 August 1919 the second of three children of Ethel Beatrice Ferrier and her husband John Kernohan McCahon. He spent most of his childhood in Dunedin, although his family lived in Oamaru for one year. He showed an early interest in art, influenced by regular visits to exhibitions and the work of his maternal grandfather, the photographer and painter William Ferrier, which hung in the family home. He attended the Maori Hill Primary School and Otago Boys' High School which he called: "the most unforgettable horror of my youth".

At the age of 14, convinced he wanted to be an artist, McCahon took Russell Clark’s Saturday morning art classes to learn the fundamental skills of painting. Visits to an exhibition by Toss Woollaston, whose landscapes, "clean, bright with New Zealand light, and full of air", also inspired him to become a painter. McCahon later attended the Dunedin School of Art (now known as Otago Polytechnic) from 1937–1939, where his teacher Robert Nettleton Field proved to be an inspirational influence. After leaving Otago, McCahon attended King Edward Technical College Art School as a part-time student.

He first exhibited his work at the Otago Art Society in 1939. His painting Harbour Cone from Peggy’s Hill was considered too abstract and was excluded from the Otago Art Society's exhibition, despite a rule entitling each member to submit one work. The society’s conventions of good taste were challenged by McCahon’s modernist style which reduced the volcanic cones of the Otago Peninsula to a topographic series of bare, almost monochromatic forms. The protests of other young artists, who withdrew their works in sympathy, forced the society to relent and display the work.