On Building Bridges

The triptych On Building Bridges was the first painting by Colin McCahon to enter the Gallery’s collection. It combines his interest in North Canterbury’s landscape with a Cubist disintegration of form. The steel trusses mirror the crisscrossed lines of the Canterbury plains, their geometry intersects with the steel armatures, which swing out above them.

For McCahon, man’s co-existence with nature has a spiritual dimension: ‘Most of my work has been aimed at relating man to the world, an acceptance of the very beautiful and terrible mysteries we are part of.’

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