Gordon Walters

In this remarkable study by the late Francis Pound, author of the landmark The Invention of New Zealand: Art and National Identity, 1930–1970 (2009), we are introduced to the making of a New Zealand modernist – tracing the work of Gordon Walters (1919–1995) – from student charcoal sketches to the mature Koru works. Pound looks hard at the paint, the brushes, the rulers, the scrapbooks, and the travels to reveal an artist at work. Resolutely internationalist like the artist, Pound provides not only astute insights into Walters’ art but also a guide to the elements and ideas that informed the work – notably, Māori and Pacific art, surrealism, Mondrian, De Stijl, the Bauhaus and Euro-American abstraction, conceptual art and minimalism. Pound’s study Gordon Walters is accompanied by a foreword and afterword by art and cultural historian Leonard Bell.

27 x 21 x 3.5cm
jacketed hardback 
464 pages
ISBN 9781869409531