Colin John McCahon (; 1August 191927May 1987)
was a prominent
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 List of islands of New Zealand, smaller islands. It is the ...
artist
An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse refers to a practitioner in the visual arts only. However, t ...
whose work over 45 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
Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, ...
to New Zealand in the mid-20th century. He is regarded as New Zealand's most important modern artist, particularly in his landscape work.
Early life and education
McCahon was born in
Timaru
Timaru (; mi, Te Tihi-o-Maru) is a port city in the southern Canterbury Region of New Zealand, located southwest of Christchurch and about northeast of Dunedin on the eastern Pacific coast of the South Island. The Timaru urban area is home ...
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
Dunedin ( ; mi, Ōtepoti) is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand (after Christchurch), and the principal city of the Otago region. Its name comes from , the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. Th ...
, 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, photographer and painter ]William Ferrier
William is a masculine given name of Norman French origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conques ...
, which hung in the family home.