Melvin Day

There were many Melvin Days, but the term `Artist’ encompasses all of them. During a career spanning seven decades, he produced some of the most intellectually astute, yet often visceral, paintings in New Zealand art history. Born in Hamilton in 1923, Day was a radical-but also a great believer in tradition. In recent years, his early Cubist-inclined paintings have reinstated him-alongside John Weeks, Charles Tole and Louise Henderson–as a key figure in mid-20th century New Zealand art. In London during the 1960s, he was a vital and talented figure in an ex-patriate scene which also included Ralph Hotere, Ted Bullmore, Don Peebles and John Drawbridge. By later that decade he had become the most highly-qualified art historian in New Zealand and had returned home to spend a turbulent, but creatively rich, decade as director of the National Art Gallery. It was a past he never put behind him. From the late 1970s until his death in 2016, his investigations into still life, landscape and art history continued with undiminished fervour. Melvin Day-Artist is one of the great hitherto-untold stories of New Zealand art and its history. With essays by five writers who knew and understood Day-Vincent O’Sullivan, Tony Mackle, Gregory O’Brien, Mark Hutchins-Pond and Julia Waite-this book brings to light a wide-ranging yet intensely focussed life’s work.