Gordon Walters

‘Decades in the making, Dr Francis Pound’s artist monograph is forensic in detail and fearsome in ambition … But it’s worth the wait. Gordon Walters is an exhilarating read in the way that few art books are.’ — Hamish Coney, Aotearoa New Zealand Review of Books

‘This huge, dense, richly illustrated book tells you everything you could possibly want to know about the great New Zealand abstract painter Gordon Walters (1919–95). Art lovers, students and specialists will relish the almost obsessive degree of attention to every detail about Walters’ work.’ — Peter Simpson, Kete Books

‘This mighty monograph is an art history masterclass, the most in-depth study of an unfolding artistic imagination this country has produced.’ — Brian Boyd, NZ Listener

Dr Francis Pound (1948–2017) was a New Zealand art historian, curator and writer. He taught for some years in the art history department of the University of Auckland before becoming an independent art curator and writer. His books include Frames on the Land: Early Landscape Painting in New Zealand (Collins, 1983), The Space Between: Pakeha Use of Maori Motifs in Modernist New Zealand Art (Workshop Press, 1994), Stories We Tell Ourselves: The Paintings of Richard Killeen (Auckland Art Gallery and David Bateman, 1999), Walters: En Abyme (Gus Fisher Gallery, 2004) and The Invention of New Zealand: Art & National Identity, 1930–1970 (Auckland University Press, 2009).

Leonard Bell is an independent art and cultural historian based in Auckland. Among other works, he is author of Colonial Constructs: European Images of Maori 1840–1914 (1992), Marti Friedlander (2009), Strangers Arrive: Emigrés and the Arts in New Zealand, 1930–1980 (2017) and Marti Friedlander: Portraits of the Artists (2020), all published by Auckland University Press.