Unity Books & Massey University Press warmly invite you to the launch of Damian Skinner’s new book

THEO SCHOON: A BIOGRAPHY

Monday 12th November, 6-7:30pm
Unity Books, 57 Willis St, Wellington

ABOUT THE BOOK
Émigré artist Theo Schoon was fascinating, unorthodox, controversial, pioneering and at times reckless. His life intersected with important cultural periods and places, where what it meant to be modern in New Zealand was being debated and articulated in art, literature, music and theatre. The art he pioneered and promoted – Māori rock drawings, the drawings of a psychiatric patient, Māori moko and kōwhaiwhai, the abstract patterns of geothermal activity in Rotorua – were decisive for many other New Zealand artists, including Gordon Walters. And his example, as an academically trained artist with a good knowledge of modern European art and a commitment to do whatever it took  to pursue his artistic projects, was both an inspiring and a cautionary tale.
Schoon’s is a life less well known now than it deserves to be. This superb, highly illustrated biography by one of New Zealand’s best art writers corrects that imbalance and examines Schoon’s claims on the development of art and culture in Aotearoa in the twentieth century.

‘The biography draws on a huge resource of written and recorded interviews and archival materials. It is a phenomenal piece of work, gone about not only with zeal and forensic precision, but also with an eye constantly on the bigger picture.’ — Greg O’Brien

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Damian Skinner is an art historian, writer and former museum curator. He is interested in the history of cultural contact between Māori and Pākehā and the relationship between art and politics in Aotearoa New Zealand. He is the author of numerous well-regarded books.

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