Colin John McCahon

Colin John McCahon - The Angel of the Annunciation - 1947 - Oil on cardboard - 647 x 521 mm - Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington (click photo for larger image)Colin John McCahon (1919–1987) 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. He is credited as being one of several artists who introduced modernism to New Zealand in the mid twentieth century, and is regarded as New Zealand's most important modern artist, particularly in his landscape work.

McCahon first exhibited his work at the Otago Art Society in 1939. His painting was considered too abstract and was excluded from the 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, however, who withdrew their works in sympathy with McCahon, forced the society to relent and display is work.

At the beginning of World War II McCahon worked in prescribed industries in support of the war effort. Later he travelled around the South Island getting seasonal work, leaving his family at home. His work from this time reflects the places he went to, particularly the Nelson region.

McCahon’s first mature works, religious paintings and symbolic landscapes, emerged in the years immediately after the war. Although he never belonged to any church, he was definitely interested in exploring issues of Christianity.

Pierre Bonnard: Simple Scenes in Outstanding Color

Pierre Bonnard - The Letter - 1906 - Oil on canvas - National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (click photo for larger image)French painter Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) was a member of the group known as Les Nabis (prophets or seers) which was part of the broader group of Symbolists. Les Nabis painters subscribed to a doctrine of abandoning three-dimensional modeling in favor of flat color areas.

Although Bonnard was a member of this group, he was not interested in obscure Symbolist subject matter and was not a mystic. Rather, he took delight in painting the scenes of simple daily life that surrounded him. Color was an end in itself for him—a way of experiencing the world. He would sometimes go back and touch up his other paintings with a new color he’d formulated. He even once persuaded his friend, artist Édouard Vuillard, to distract one of the guards in a museum while he touched up a work that had been completed years before!

Alphonse Osbert - A Poetic Visual Language

Alphonse Osbert - The Muse at Sunrise - 1918 - Oil on wood - Private collection (click photo for larger image)Alphonse Osbert (1857–1939) was a French Symbolist painter who was educated at the École des Beaux Arts. Although he was initially an admirer of the great Spanish masters—his style moved away from the academic when he became inspired by the Post-Impressionists and other Symbolists, such as Pierre Puvis de Chavannes.

Osbert abandoned naturalistic painting and took up a Pointillist technique similar to that used by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. He developed a signature style characterized by unearthly light, and ghostlike muses in mysterious landscapes.

Theo van Doesburg: Elementarism

Theo van Doesburg - Café Aubette, Strasbourg, France (Color scheme for floor and long walls of ballroom, preliminary version - 1927 - Ink, gouache, and metallic gouache on paper - 21 x 14 3/4" (53.3 x 37.5 cm) - Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) New York (click photo for larger image)Dutch Neo-Plasticist painter Theo van Doesburg (born Christian Emil Marie Küpper) (1883-1931) was one of the founders and leading theorists of the DeStijl movement (along with Piet Mondrian, which began in the Netherlands and flourished into one of the major inter-war movements. “It advocated a simplified, geometric, and reductive aesthetic in the visual arts and argued that painting, design, and architecture should be fully integrated.” 

In addition to painting, Van Doesburg designed buildings, room decorations, stained glass, furniture, and household items that embodied both De Stijl's aesthetic theories and the artist’s personal ideas. He also wrote numerous essays and treatises on geometric abstraction and De Stijl, published journals, and organized many exhibitions of works by De Stijl artists and related movements.

Van Doesburg’s personal vision was called Elementarism. It emphasized subtle shifts in tones, tilting geometric shapes at angles relative to the picture plane, and varying lengths of horizontal and vertical lines colored lines—some disconnected from one another. This represented a shift away from the stricter practice of Mondrian. Van Doesburg explained Elementarism as "based on the neutralization of the positive and negative directions by the diagonal and, as far as color is concerned, by the dissonant. Equilibrated relations are not the ultimate result."

Marianne von Werefkin: Stunning Expressionism

Marianne von Werefkin - Sturmwind (Storm Wind) c. 1915-17- Oil on canvas - 47 x 62 cmRussian-German-Swiss Expressionist Marianne von Werefkin (1860-1938) met fellow artist Alexei Jawlensky in 1892—and moved with him to Munich in 1896. She put her own painting on hold for over ten years for the sake of his art—but began painting again in 1906. 

While in Munich, the couple met Wassily Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter. The four artists frequently painted together, in the open air, in and around Murnau—a rural town outside of Munich where Münter owned a house. They founded a new artist-group in 1909, the Neue Künstlervereinigung München (New Association of Artists in Munich, NKVM). It became a forum of exhibitions and programming. After a few years, however, Kandinsky and co-member Franz Marc distanced themselves from this group and formed Der Blau Reiter ( the Blue Rider), which covers the second phase of German Expressionism.

At the outbreak of WWI, Werefkin and Jawlensky moved to Switzerland, eventually settling in Geneva. By 1918, the couple had separated and Werefkin moved alone to Ascona, located on the shore of Lake Maggiore, in Switzerland, where she remained for the rest of her life. She continued to paint in the Expressionist style. She also formed another artists’ group, Großer Bär (Big Bear) in 1924.

Werefkin’s work embodies influences from both Paul Gauguin and Edvard Munch, yet her results are uniquely her own. She is one of many female artists to whom a great deal more scholarly attention should be paid.