Theo Schoon: A Biography [Paperback]

?migr? 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  Maori rock drawings, the drawings of a psychiatric patient, Maori moko and kowhaiwhai, 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.

Schoons is a life less well known now than it deserves to be. This superb, highly illustrated biography by one of New Zealands best art writers corrects that imbalance and examines Schoons claims on the development of art and culture in Aotearoa in the twentieth century.

The important biography of a significant figure in New Zealand art and culture

Damian Skinner is an art historian, writer and curator. He has written a number of books about Pakeha and Maori artists, with a special focus on modern art from the middle of the twentieth century, includingThe Passing World, The Passage of Life: John Hovell and the Art of Kowhaiwhai(Rim Books, 2010), which won the New Zealand Post Book Award for Illustrated Non-fiction in 2011. He completed an MA Thesis about Theo Schoon for the University of Auckland in 1997, and is co-curating an exhibition of Schoons art that will open at the City Gallery, Wellington, in November 2018.