Colin McCahon Prints

A note about the current lack of supply of prints to buy of McCahon paintings (Updated Jan 2025).

Colin McCahon is New Zealand’s most famous painter, and in any other country you would be easily able to buy an affordable print of that nation’s most famous artist’s paintings. French people can buy a print of a Monet painting for their walls, Dutch people a Van Gogh - no one expects that you should only be able to have the art of these famous artists in your home through the ownership of an original painting. There have been many McCahon paintings for sale as prints from various publishers previously, most large (say at least 600 x 800mm) high quality offset prints that by the early 2020s retailed for around $79.95.

For the last three years we (ie the team at New Zealand Fine Prints, NZ’s specialist retailer of art prints and posters run by the same family since 1966 - so we know what we are doing in the private sector side of NZ arts) have politely tried to reach out to the people who control the artist’s copyright through the Colin McCahon Research & Publication Trust after they unilaterally stopped anyone publishing any more prints of McCahon paintings during the time of the Auckland lockdowns (resulting in the fact that we have now almost totally sold out of prints by this artist in the intervening time). The secretary of the Colin McCahon Research and Publication Trust was just fine to deal with personally but beyond knowing someone suddenly had a problem with affordable prints of McCahon paintings going onto the classroom wall, in the flat sitting room or decorating a NZ diplomat’s office the folks on the committee just weren’t going to tell us why. No matter that we respectfully asked just to be allowed to have a conversation with them either through email, on the phone, in person or Zoom to try and find out what was going on.

People just like you (assuming you have arrived on this page at prints.co.nz looking to buy a print of our most acclaimed artist’s work) have purchased thousands of McCahon prints over the 30+ years New Zealand Fine Prints stocked McCahon prints for sale. Prints that were mainly published by galleries such as the Christchurch Art Gallery, Te Papa, Auckland Art Gallery etc - so your purchases raised money to support the work of these galleries as well as generating royalties for the Colin McCahon Trust (which they used to publicise the artist’s work, educate and fund research etc).

This update is the first time we have said anything publically about this issue, we hope that by subtly updating this artist biography page at the home of NZ prints being sold online we can as diplomatically as possible try get some progress toward better understanding the issues or concerns the McCahon committee members have on behalf of kiwis wanting to buy prints who previously McCould, but now McCan't for unknown reasons that noone outside of the Trust has yet been given the opportunity to constructively address.

We think it would be reasonable to expect at least 20-30 prints to be available at any one time of McCahon’s most well loved paintings, in say A1 in size - maybe some smaller prints as well. Printed offset (ie 500 or 1000 at a time) these would retail for under $100, and last for decades. Famous paintings in other countries are available as affordable prints as a matter of course, it is unusual and we reckon a little embarassing that NZ can’t manage to do this for our most famous artist.

We would love to hear from the McCahon Research and Publication Trust chair as the first step in getting the flow of affordable prints flowing out to kiwis again, you have all our details so please get in touch. And if anyone knows what might be going on please drop us a line through our contact form, we just want to listen to whatever concerns the Trustees have with no agenda or axe to grind so we can all understand the Trust's position on reproduction prints more clearly.

Back to the artist biography page … Colin McCahon (1919-1987) was born in Timaru, his early life was lived in Dunedin where he studied at the Technical College. Moving to Nelson in 1939, Colin McCahon spent a decade in the area, where he and Toss Woollaston influenced each other's work.

After spending almost five years in Christchurch, Colin McCahon and his family moved to Auckland, where he worked at the Auckland City Art Gallery and was later appointed lecturer at the Auckland University School of Fine Arts. Characteristic of much of McCahon's work is religious symbolism, and the use of words in the painting; later the words became the whole painting.