Melvin Day
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Melvin Day CNZM | |
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Director of the National Art Gallery
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| In office 1968 – 1978 |
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| Preceded by | Stewart Bell Maclennan |
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| Succeeded by | Luit Bieringa |
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Government Art Historian
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| In office 1978 – 1984 |
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| Born | June 30, 1923 Hamilton, New Zealand |
Melvin "Pat" Day CNZM (born June 30, 1923) is a New Zealand artist and art historian.
Day was born in Hamilton, New Zealand. At the age of eleven he began taking Saturday morning classes at Elam School of Art, University of Auckland. In 1939, he went on to study as a full-time student at Elam, graduating with a Preliminary diploma in fine arts two years later. Apart from a brief period at Auckland Teachers’ Training College, Day spent the remaining war years in the New Zealand Army and then the Royal New Zealand Air Force. Due to his drafting abilities he worked on topographical and landscape views of the Matakana area and Mototapu Islands.
He married Oroya McAuley in 1952 and lived and worked for a time in Rotorua. After a few years teaching and painting in the Rotorua area, Day arrived in Wellington in 1954 and took up studies towards a Bachelor of Arts at Victoria University of Wellington while teaching at Hutt Intermediate School. From the late 1950s onwards, he exhibited widely in New Zealand and his work was included in the 1961 Commonwealth Art Today exhibition at the Commonwealth Institute, London. Eager to continue his studies, in 1963 Day enrolled at one of the foremost centres of art historical research in the world, the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. At the Courtauld Institute, Day developed a fascination for the geometric precision in the paintings of Italian Renaissance artist, Paolo Uccello and began what were to become the celebrated modernist adaptations of his Uccello series. After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts with Honours, he taught at schools of art in London before returning to New Zealand in 1968.
He was appointed the Director of the National Art Gallery of New Zealand (now defunct) in 1968, while there making astute purchases of paintings by Colin McCahon, Don Binney and Gordon Walters, before the primacy of their work was established. In 1978 he was appointed Government Art Historian. During his time as Director, Day continued painting prolifically and two retrospective exhibitions were held: at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery in 1970 and at the Dowse Art Gallery, Lower Hutt, the following year.
Since that time, Melvin Day’s paintings have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions. A major survey exhibition, Melvin Day – Full Circle was shown at the Wellington City Art Gallery in 1984.
In 1990, Day was encouraged by the New Zealand Portrait Gallery Trust to paint Donald McIntyre.
Melvin Day is, in many respects, a scholarly painter. His work engages with various periods of western art history, exploring philosophical as well as formal concerns. In a 1984 review, Ian Wedde described Day’s Uccello series as incorporating
- "the compositional serialism of Cézanne, the low-key cubism of Braque, perhaps the contemplative lighting of Morandi; sometimes the vertical shafting of planes out of Feininger."
Yet, it is also true that the works look back well beyond the tradition of twentieth century European modernism.
In 2003, Day was awarded the CNZM for his services to the arts.
