An Exhibition of Paintings from July 1947 to September 1948

1948

Brasch Pamphlets Box C3 no.28

Dunedin, 1948

The Brasch Collection totals some 160 linear metres of books. This includes 22 boxes full of ephemeral booklets, pamphlets and keepsakes. Brasch’s pictorial collection – housed at the Hocken Library – numbered 461 art pieces. Artists represented in that collection included Esmond Atkinson, R.S. Carson, Evelyn Page, Ralph Hotere, Janet Paul, Doris Lusk, and Colin McCahon. Brasch was a staunch friend of McCahon. From one of Brasch’s pamphlet boxes is a scarce hand list of a McCahon exhibition that ran from July 1947 to September 1948 in the Dunedin Public Library. It begins: ‘Colin McCahon’s paintings startle and even shock us at first sight because he does not paint the world as we are accustomed to see it and think of it every day.’ It is signed ‘C.B’, that is, Charles Brasch.