This exciting book by a leading younger art historian charts the growth and development of the Maori modernist art that emerged from the rapid urbanisation of Maori in the midtwentieth century and the complex transition of Maori cultural and social structures from a rural to an urban setting. Artists like Arnold Wilson, Para Matchitt and Selwyn Muru, encouraged by Gordon Tovey and the Education Department, constructed a Maori art that reacted against the customary culture championed by Ngata and attempted to respond to the modern world in which they lived.Introductory chapters set the conservative scene against which the artists reacted and a conclusion points forward to contemporary Maori art which, under the impact of the Maori renaissance of the 1970s, showed a renewed focus on tradition. This book includes a rich selection of reproductions of Maori modernist art, many of which are of brilliant works not widely known and often from the artists' own collections. This important book will attract widespread attention and interest.