gerard sekoto (1913- 1993). write a paragraph of analysis on the sekoto work, using the following...

Gerard

Sekoto

(1913-

1993)

Write a paragraph of analysis on the Sekoto work, using the following headingsTo help you structure it. In your first sentence note the possible influence of artists like Van Gogh and German Expressionists such as Kirchner. In your second sentence, note how Sekoto develops his own language.

Texture: scumble technique; rendering of basket weave, walls and robe is effectiveSpace: forms pressed against picture plane; claustrophobiaUnity: head acts as a fulcrum; radiating linesContrast: large shapes vs. small shapes; yellow ochre vs. whiteEmphasis: pose of the figure; we identify with his thoughts

Poverty in the Midst of Plenty (1939)

Street Scene Street Scene (1939) (1939)

Line: geometric; organicColour: primaries; vibrancy and harmony

Space: shallow recessional space; evokes two-dimensional quality of mass-housing

Texture: corrugated areas; blurred linesEmphasis: figures at edges of format;

central area of emptiness

Write a paragraph of analysis on the Sekoto work, using the following headings

To help you structure it. In your first sentence note the possible influence of artists like Mondrian and Van Gogh. In

your second sentence, note how Sekoto develops his own language.

Prison YardPrison Yard (1944) (1944)Write a paragraph of analysis on the

Sekoto work, using the following headingsto help you structure it. In your first

sentence note the possible influence of artists like Kirchner, Mondrian and Picasso. In your second sentence, note how Sekoto

develops his own language.

Form: geometric; reduction of identityContrast: dark and light; warm colours /

cold coloursRhythm: repetition evokes movement;

prison warder has more vigorous movement

Space: diagonals create unnatural distorted space; flattening against picture plane

Emphasis: prison warder isolated through difference; controlling force in environment

Song of the PickSong of the Pick (1946 – 47) (1946 – 47)

Write a paragraph of analysis on the Sekoto work, using the following headingsto help you structure it. In your first sentence note the possible influence of any one of these artists. In your second sentence, note how Sekoto develops his own language.

Line: repeated diagonal lines; curved lines evoke idea of unified movement

Tone: extreme darks and lights; simplified tones

Rhythm: a pattern is set up across the work; idea of one unified movement

Form: bodies reduced to basic geometric forms; background created using three

horizontal bands Emphasis: no focal point; evokes de-

humanisation and / or possible resistance

Historically, there was little documentation on the life of black Artists working in South Africa. Apartheid permeated South African society as a whole, influencing attitudes outside of politics, and shaping scholastic opinions.

Sekoto was born on 9 December, 1913 at Bothshabelo, a German Lutheran Mission Station. His father was a teacher, and later an evangelist. Sekoto’s mother tongue was Pedi, Northern Sotho.In 1947, Sekoto left for 46 years in voluntary exile in Paris, where he died in 1993.

Sekoto’s rural childhood memories were treasured for his whole life, and were a source of solace and strength.At 17, he was sent to the Diocesan Training College near Pietersburg to train as a primary school teacher. Contemporaries included Ernest Mancoba and Georges Pemba, artists who were also trained as schoolteachers.

Sekoto taught for four years at Khaiso School, near Pietersburg, in the Northern Transvaal. In 1937, he was awarded second prize in a national Bantu art competition.Ernest Mancoba, who also taught at the school, encouragedhim to paint, showing him paintings by Van Gogh, and using Van Gogh’s life to show that life was indeed a struggle. When Sekoto’s father died in 1938, he no longer had an obligation to fulfil his dream for him to be a teacher and was free

to pursue his own aims.

His works may be examined into three periods for study purposes: the late 1930s in Sophiatown; the early 1940s in District Six; and, the latter 1940s in Eastwood, Pretoria. Less characteristic works were made in Paris from 1947 onwards.

First Period – Works from the Late 1930s: First Period – Works from the Late 1930s: SophiatownSophiatown

In 1939, Sekoto went to live with cousins in Sophiatown, Johannesburg. Discovering cheap supplies in a general store, he experimented with poster paint on brown cardboard in works such as Poverty in the Midst of Plenty (1939).

Poverty in the Midst

of Plenty

(1939)

Identify the FIVE most obvious art elements or principles of design that have been used in this work.


of Plenty

(1939)

TextureContrastSpaceUnity Emphasis


of Plenty

(1939)

Texture: scumble technique; rendering of basket weave, walls and robe is effective Contrast: large shapes vs. small shapes; yellow ochre vs. white

Space: forms pressed against picture plane; claustrophobia

Unity: head acts as a fulcrum; radiating lines Emphasis: pose of the figure; we identify with his thoughts

The vigorous brushstrokes of artists like Vincent Van Gogh – evident in workssuch as Sunflowers and Self Portrait (Dedicated To Gauguin) (both 1888) – was possibly an influence on works such as Poverty in the Midst of Plenty (1939).

In addition, the distortion of the human figure using expressive brushstrokes by German Expressionists such as Kirchner was surely also an influence.

.

Write a paragraph of analysis on the Sekoto work, using the following headingsTo help you structure it. In your first sentence note the possible influence of artists like Van Gogh and German Expressionists such as Kirchner. In your second sentence, note how Sekoto develops his own language.

Texture: scumble technique; rendering of basket weave, walls and robe is effectiveSpace: forms pressed against picture plane; claustrophobiaUnity: head acts as a fulcrum; radiating linesContrast: large shapes vs. small shapes; yellow ochre vs. whiteEmphasis: pose of the figure; we identify with his thoughts

Poverty in the Midst of Plenty (1939)

A friend encouraged him to show his work to Reverend Castle, ateacher at St. Peters School in Rosettenville, Johannesburg..

Castle was so impressed that he offered Sekoto free board andlodging at the school, enabling him to attend the school’s artclasses. Soon after, he was offered a temporary six-week teaching post at the school. Castle also organised Sekoto’s first exhibition at the Gainsborough Galleries.

A newspaper critic noted:

“The paintings by Gerard Sekoto are the outstanding feature of this exhibition . . . His canvases are marked by extremely good colour and drawing”

Lutheran Church at Botshabelo (1939)

The motivating force behind works was his desire to use art tocommunicate through the ‘inter-linking chains of humanity’.

“ My efforts when I was in Sophiatown were to arouse theconsciousness in our own people of the horrible conditionsin which they lived. Such an awakening would create power to demand the right and knowledge to be able to live like everyone else in the country.”

Although many of the depictions of Sophiatown have a lyricalquality, the actual reality of the sordid surroundings is made apparent in different ways in each of the Sophiatown paintings.

Interior SophiatownInterior Sophiatown (1939) (1939)


LineColourSpaceTexture Emphasis

Hints at the influence of the De Stijl artist Piet Mondrian (1872-1944).


Line: geometric; organic

Colour: primaries; vibrancy and harmony


Texture: corrugated areas; blurred lines Emphasis: figures at edges of format; central area of emptiness


Line: geometric; organicColour: primaries; vibrancy and harmony


Texture: corrugated areas; blurred linesEmphasis: figures at edges of format;

central area of emptiness

Write a paragraph of analysis on the Sekoto work, using the following headings

To help you structure it. In your first sentence note the possible influence of artists like Mondrian and Van Gogh. In

your second sentence, note how Sekoto develops his own language.

Hotel Bantu (1939)

Yellow Houses, SophiatownYellow Houses, Sophiatown (1940) (1940)

In 1940, the Johannesburg Art Gallery purchased Yellow Houses, Sophiatown, and until 1980 Sekoto’swork remained the only painting in the gallery by a blackSouth African artist. (This same gallery had turned down his application to be a floor cleaner because of his skin colour.)

Sekoto denied having been influenced by training or exposure to other artist’s work. He did not try to conform to stylistic traditions, or comply with conventional taste. Although his intuitive sense of colour links his work to Post-Impressionists like Gauguin and Van Gogh, he is separated from them by his subject matter. He looked to the black people around him for inspiration.

His style of work was termed “figurative expressionistic”

and he was often referred to as a “social realist”.

Sekoto painted with deep feeling and active sympathy for the black South Africans whose soul was daily being crushed and bruised in his own Africa.

He used strong and bright colours such as red, orange andblack. His brushstroke was spontaneous and vital. Sekoto also employed unconventional viewpoints, and handled form through distortion and unusual perspective. He placed emphasis on tonal modelling of form.

Three Women (1940 -42)

Second Period - Works from the Early 1940s: Second Period - Works from the Early 1940s: District SixDistrict Six

Reverend Castle introduced Sekoto to George Manuel, a Journalist living in District Six, Cape Town, and arranged for Sekoto, his mother and sisters to live in a house opposite the Roeland Street jail. This place was a great source of inspiration for Sekoto.

His social / political commentary is implicit in these compositions:he seldom portrayed white people, and then only as warders orforemen. In 1943, three of Sekoto’s paintings were included in an Exhibition of the New Group. This was an association of white South African avante garde artists whose main objective was to Upgrade the overall standard of South African art and increase Public awareness of it.

Prison Prison YardYard (1944)(1944)


Prison YardPrison Yard (1944) (1944)

FormContrastRhythmSpace Emphasis


Form: geometric; reduction of identity

Contrast: dark and light; warm colours / cold colours

Rhythm: repetition evokes movement; prison warder has more vigorous movement

Space: diagonals create unnatural distorted space; flattening against picture plane Emphasis: prison warder isolated through difference; controlling force in environment


One can see the influence of Cubism in the analysis o form as geometric facets in this work.

Prison YardPrison Yard (1944) (1944)Write a paragraph of analysis on the

Sekoto work, using the following headingsto help you structure it. In your first

sentence note the possible influence of artists like Kirchner, Mondrian and Picasso. In your second sentence, note how Sekoto

develops his own language.

Form: geometric; reduction of identityContrast: dark and light; warm colours /

cold coloursRhythm: repetition evokes movement;

prison warder has more vigorous movement

Space: diagonals create unnatural distorted space; flattening against picture plane

Emphasis: prison warder isolated through difference; controlling force in environment

Houses: District SixHouses: District Six (1943-45) (1943-45)

His social / political commentary is implicit in these compositions:he seldom portrayed white people, and then only as warders orforemen. In 1943, three of Sekoto’s paintings were included in an Exhibition of the New Group. This was an association of white South African avante garde artists whose main objective was to Upgrade the overall standard of South African art and increase Public awareness of it.

The The Wine Wine

DrinkerDrinker (1943-45)(1943-45)

Third Period - Works from the Third Period - Works from the Mid- to Latter 1940s: EastwoodMid- to Latter 1940s: Eastwood

In 1945, Sekoto moved to Eastwood, a black townshipnear Pretoria. He shared a house with his mother and stepfather, and his brother Bernard and his wife, Mary. These were the’ golden years’ of Sekoto’s art and he painted prolifically, concentrating on oil paint.

He was able to capture the transient moments of everyday township life with an intuitive sense of colour and assured brush marks.

Like Sophiatown, District Six and many other communities,Eastwood was bulldozed to the ground in the early apartheid years.Sekoto’s paintings serve as historical records of thesedestroyed communities.


Self-Portrait Self-Portrait (1946-7)(1946-7)

Portrait of Anna, Portrait of Anna, the Artist’s Motherthe Artist’s Mother (1946-47)(1946-47)

The Artist’s Mother and Stepfather at Home in EastwoodThe Artist’s Mother and Stepfather at Home in Eastwood (1946 – 47)(1946 – 47)

The The Proud Father -Proud Father -

Manakedi Manakedi on Bernardon Bernard

Sekoto’s KneeSekoto’s Knee (1947)(1947)

Outside the ShopOutside the Shop (1946-47) (1946-47)

Sixpence a DoorSixpence a Door (1946 – 47) (1946 – 47)

“ Our home was close to the playing ground which was thecentre of the township.On Sundays, Zulu dancers would come and put up a tent.People would be eager to see inside, but many wouldhang around with curiosity as they did not have thesixpence to spend:” Sekoto

Sekoto set up the easel and painted the scene in front of him.This painting was included in an exhibition which travelledbetween 1948 and 1950 to Belgium, France, Netherlands,Canada and the United States.At the opening of the Tate, the Queen Mother acclaimed thatshe liked the one by the “native artist” the most, and Sekotowas launched into the limelight. The painting was sold in 1991 for R 186 000.


LineToneRhythmFormEmphasis



Tone: extreme darks and lights; simplified tones Rhythm: a pattern is set up across the work; idea of one unified movement

Form: bodies reduced to basic geometric forms; background created using three horizontal bands Emphasis: no focal point; evokes both dehumanisation and / or

possible resistance

The distortion of German Expressionism

is also visible.

The influence of the geometric grid of horizontals and verticals of De Stijl is evident in this work.

One can also see the influence of Cubism in the analysis of form

as geometric facets.


Write a paragraph of analysis on the Sekoto work, using the following headingsto help you structure it. In your first sentence note the possible influence of any one of these artists. In your second sentence, note how Sekoto develops his own language.


Tone: extreme darks and lights; simplified tones

Rhythm: a pattern is set up across the work; idea of one unified movement

Form: bodies reduced to basic geometric forms; background created using three

horizontal bands Emphasis: no focal point; evokes de-

humanisation and / or possible resistance

Song of the Pick is one of the most politically explicit compositions, inspired by a black and white photograph which Sekoto kept with him all his life. He reworked this theme again and again in his life.

In 1947, the financial support from his patrons, mainly Jewishintellectuals, enabled him to leave the country for Paris.

The tragic irony is that he was forced to pay a high personal pricefor his political freedom, as his art slowly lost its strength and character.

Homage to Steve BikoHomage to Steve Biko

Irma Stern (1894 – 1966)

Shewitnessed appalling conditions indarkest Africaand wrote 2 travelogues: Congo (1943) and Zanzibar (1948).

Stern was assertive in her professional life, but unhappilymarried to her childhood tutor, Johannes Prinz,for 7 years. She had a nervous breakdown after a failed love affair, and was sexually unfulfilled.

Stern was born in Schweizer-Reneike. She was a controversial artist during her lifetime, challenging expectations about painting. Her career spanned more than fifty years, with over a hundred one-person shows.

Several artists workingat the turn of the nineteenth into the twentieth century in the Post-Impressionism,Cubism and GermanExpressionism move-ments may have been

influences for Stern.

She may have been drawn to thesymbolic colour of Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), an artist whoalso relied on his “innereye”, as opposed to a naturalistic represen-tation of the world around him.

Paul Gauguin –The Spirit of the Dead Watches

Gauguinalsopaintedfemale nudesinexotic settings.

The vigorousbrushstrokes ofartists like Vincent Van Gogh – evident in workssuch as Sunflowers and Self Portrait (DedicatedTo Gauguin) (both 1888) - may also have been an influence.

A revolutionary approach to the female nude was evident in works such as Les Demoiselles D’Avignon (1907), by Pablo Picasso. Picasso fragmentsform and space.

A revolutionary appr The German Expressionists were a profound influence, and also dealt with the female form using expressive brushstrokes.

Western artists working in the early twentieth century were fascinated with exotic art. The gunboats and steamers of colonialism had brought back artefacts from other cultures, and these were used as raw material by artists.

Colonialist Stereotypes based on cannibalism, violence and notions of the

Noble Savage became an inherent part of the work that was produced.

While there are fluctuations in Stern’s style in her most prolific period – the 1920s to the 1950s - her

Subject Matter is relatively consistent.

Her portraits often involve semi-nude female forms in ethnic finery, and dressed for initiation ceremonies. There is also a focus on exploring different cultures such as Malay, Arab, Zulu, Xhosa, and so on.

The Still lives involve arrangements of flowers, fruit, tribal masks and cultural artefacts.

After World War II, Stern painted mostly European subjects.In the 1960s, Stern paints field-workers, grape-harvesters and fishermen.

The statue of a gilded Christ figure is set against a rich yellow background.

Stern focussed on the flatsurface of the canvas andthe process of painting.

She creates a creamyphysicality of paint.

Strong tonal contrasts areemphasised.

Still Life withStatue (1922)

Composition (1923)

In works painted after her first major exhibition, Stern continues to depict sensual black women, presenting them in states of semi-nudity, and as young and nubile. Stern patronised her subjects and their life styles, regarding the subject matter as visual inspiration, not considering the social, political and economic implications of their situations.Details are exaggerated and stylised to create an ideal image of a “noble savage”.

It is interesting to note that Stern never did any self-portraits, and it has been suggested that she projected her inner self-image as an exploration of her own sexuality.

Stern’s response to Africa was romantic and exotic, reflecting theModernist interest in Primitivism originated by artists like Gauguin as an alternative to the materialism and rationalism of European values.

She believed in the concept of the Primitive and the Utopian, anidyllic and exotic environment, showing scant understanding of thepower imbalances created by colonialism in Africa and detached from the social ramifications of her subjects.

She felt that the ’natives’ were people detached from a historicalcontext, devoid of sociological meaning and enjoying a form of utopia. Pre-industrial people seemed to be living in harmony with nature.

Repose (1927)Working from her imagination, Stern places the Swazi women in a colourful and decorative setting replete with naturalistic details like amaryllis flowers and pawpaws. The composition comprises rhythmical line.


Repose (1927)


Swazi Youth (1929)

The controversial response to her first exhibition caused Stern to travel across Africa. Despite her exposure to the brutality of colonialism and slavery, paintings such Swazi Youth depict black Africans as dominant in utopian landscapes.

Pondo Woman (1929)The naturalism of the figure is contrasted by the stylised treatment of the background. The figure is represented in a state ofcontemplation.

In the most recent cycle test, only TWO Art students in the whole group wrote anything resembling full three-mark introductions to the essay, and these still need work!

Leanne Adams writes:As a result of “a culture of congestion” many twentieth and twenty first century artists have been forced to realign their art in such a way that it fits in with this radical change in society. Marcel Duchamp reworked the relationship between men and women, displaying it as a reflection of society today. Jackson Pollock tried to return to a long forgotten “nature” through his work. Jasper Johns used mixed media to create a feeling of insecurity during a time of uncertainty. Duane Hanson uses life-like sculpture to portray societies evolution from the “infinite complexity of Nature” to todays society.

I would prefer to read the following:

As a result of “a culture of congestion”, many twentieth-century artists realigned the meaning in their art with radical changes in society. The relationship between men and women in work by the Dada artist Marcel Duchamp reflects a society in which communication is fraught with complications; while even the leading proponent of Abstract Expressionism, Jackson Pollock, tries to return to a long forgotten nature using industrial paint. With Pop Art, Jasper Johns uses mixed media to create a feeling of insecurity and paranoia; while the absence of life in the supposedly life-like sculptures by Duane Hanson of Super-Realism evoke the idea of a society far removed from the “infinite complexity of Nature”.

Notice that the topic is stated in ONE sentence.You also combine your introduction to TWO artists into ONE sentence.State which movement they are from, work chronologically, and underline the movement.

Graham Strickland writes:The ever-progressing force of technology is one that has shaped our lives and mind-sets in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Max Ernst was a prominent German Dadaist and Surrealist who was greatly influenced by the progression of a world removing itself from nature and expressed his anxieties over this idea in his artworks from both movements. Jackson Pollock was an Abstract Expressionist artist living in America who worked with modern techniques, but instead chose to involve his work with nature. Chuck Close is an American photorealist painter whose work is executed using every modern technique.

I would prefer to read the following:

The force of technology has shaped the life and mindset of twentieth and twenty-first century humanity. Max Ernst, a prominent German artist who made the transition from Dada into Surrealism, was horrified by the idea of a world increasingly removing itself from nature and expressed his anxiety in works that belong to both movements. While the work of the Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock is closely tied to Nature, it is often executed using industrial paint; while, with Photo-Realism, the works of the painter Chuck Close can really only be interpreted through the lens of photography.

Maggie Laubser (1886-1972) was born in Malmesbury in the Cape. Her first recorded participation in an exhibition was in 1910. There is no further record of her exhibiting until 1922, when she returned briefly to Cape Town from abroad. After her studies at the Slade School in London, she had visited Germany, and then the shores of Lake Garda in Italy. The two works showed her already schooled in the principles of Modernism. Laubser went to Germany soon after the 1922 exhibition, where was encouraged by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. In 1924, she returned to SA to live near Klipheuvel in the Cape. In her new phase in SA, her work focussed on portraits of African and Indian men and women. In 1931, her entry to the First Annual Exhibition of Contemporary National Art, held at the SANG, outraged the conservative critic Bernard Lewis who fulminated: What shall I say of Maggie Loubser's (sic) crude effort at portraiture? Is this dark wooden face that of a coloured man or woman, whose pink shirt and blue scarf yell at me from a background of beetroot-coloured hills and starch-blue shapes which may or may not be meant for clouds? It is "modem" - it needs no further description. Its crudity is a condemnation. (The Cape, 11.12.1931). She died in 1973 in Strand.

Vermeer - The Astronomer (1668)

Exposure to the heightened naturalism of Dutch artists such as Jan Vermeer (1632-1675) in Europe would be a profound influence on Laubser’s early work. However, also notice the differences.

Blue Bells

Paul Gauguin –The Spirit of the Dead Watches

As withStern,Laubser paintsAfrican figuresinexotic settings.

Repose (1927)

Identify the FIVE most obvious art elements or principles of design that have been used in this work. Try to identify elements common to both Laubser and Gauguin.

Indian Girl

Walter Battiss (1906-1983) was born in Somerset East.He spent most of his boyhood in two isolated Orange Free State villages, both situated in an area that is richly studded withindigenous rock-painting sites. These areas were the major influence on his life’s work.

Battiss experimented with many kinds of media in the course of his career, including oils on canvas, woodcuts, and silkscreenprints. He frequently applied lavish colour with a thickly laden brush in his paintings in the manner of the German Expressionists, overlaying this with calligraphic line and inscribed details.

Battiss was a very influential artist in South Africa. He was constantly in touch with European art, and headed of the Fine Arts Department at UNISA.

Battiss was profoundly influenced by the art of the San, the original inhabitants of Africa, writing two books on the subject.He spent hours examining and copyingrock paintings in painted shelters. He went on many trips locally and overseas, and was very interested in archeology.By 1950, Battiss related an inherited Western artisticviewpoint with an empathetic view of indigenous artists whoworked on the walls of caves and shelters.Battiss developed his own visual language using picture-writing, or pictographs.His abstracted designs are composed of calligraphic images

which tell a story symbolically.

Yellow Afternoon (1950)


“I conversed with the ancient men of Africa, who spoke tome through their picture writings on the walls of their crumblingrock shelters.” Battiss

Indigenous paintings are usually characterised by the implied movement of human figures interacting with animals.

The paintings are often palimpsests – made up of images drawn in differing techniques that overlap. The space of indigenous art often has a lyrical, dreamlike quality. For these painters the material and immaterial worlds could not be separated.

Battiss was strongly influenced by such ideas,and tries to interpret them using his ownstylistic devices.

Fishermen Drawing Nets (1955)

As with Irma Stern,in images such as Bed Carriers (1941),Battiss sometimes views labour as connected to an idyllic landscape.

In his work rhythmic forms andlines take our attentionaway from the labourinvolved in drawing fishing-nets.

Palimpsest No 1 1965

In many indigenous paintings repetitive lines set up energy fields, and we have seen that Battiss was attracted to this idea.

Works such as Palimpsest No 1 (1965) demonstrate Battiss’s flirtation with Pop Art.The bold stenciled shapes and broad contours result from experimentation with the silkscreen medium.

Flight of Birds (1966)

Battiss, as with Irma Stern in works such as The Water Carriers (1935), concentrates on the expressive force of brushmarksand thick impasto paint.Battiss creates a tactile surface that is texturally expressive,frequently scratching intowet paint with the backof the brush.As with Stern, his vision of Black Africans is exoticised.

Symbols of Life (1967)

Warriors in a trance-like state often appear to be dancing in indigenous paintings. Symbols of Life is an abstracted work, symbolically telling the story of a river and the varied life that it sustains.

Battiss is portraying the river as a magical or godlike force connected to fertility. He inherits the space of indigenous paintings, where forms are often piled up on one another.

The linear calligraphic detail and hieroglyphic forms are inspired by indigenous paintings, but also by Middle Eastern decorative art. On his travels Battiss had studied the calligraphy of Arabic scripts.

Later, Battiss works with another South African

artist, Norman Catherine (b. 1949), on the ¥“Fook Island”↑ concept.

With “¥ Fook Island ↑”Battiss still explores unity in relation to people, plants and creatures, the land, the water, birth and reincarnation. As with indigenous painters he is concerned with the entire tapestry of life and afterlife.

Alexis Preller (1911-1976)

Preller was born in Pretoria in 1911, and schooled at Pretoria Boy’s High. He studied art in London and Paris, and was influenced by movements such as Cubism.

The outbreak of World War II brought him to Pretoria. Here he had his first exhibition of African subjects, and became part of the ‘New Group’.

Preller joined the Field Ambulance Corps, served in North Africa, and was captured and held as a prisoner of war in Italy until 1943. The memories of war experiences became a lifelong obsession and influenced his often disquieting style.

Preller travelled extensively to Zanzibar, the Seychelles, Swaziland, the Congo and Egypt. Africa was a stimulus to his imagination. He was interested in tribal life and custom, especially the Ndebele tribe. He was captivated by the mystique of archaic cultures, legends, and by the rituals and ruins of the past.

His travels allowed him to develop a private iconography.He creates an evocative and detailed rendering of human actions, dress and architecture. Unexpected relationships are developed and the process of metamorphosis in his workshas been generally viewed as surrealistic.

Basuto Allegory (1947)


Basuto Allegory (1947)Involves a play of scale, with miniature figures dwarfed by giant figures. The simple activity of drinking from gourds becomes mysterious as the gourds hide the figures’ faces. The face of the figure on the left appears to disappear. If one concentrates on the top left-hand side of composition, one notices that Preller is fascinatedwith how objects transform into people, into architecture, and then into empty space. The depiction of anoble savage taking part in an exotic activity in a foreign worldmay remind one of works by IrmaStern. (Preller admired works by Stern and Gauguin). Here the rich patterns, habits and rituals of a foreign culture become mysterious and slightly

threatening.

Basuto Allegory (1947)

René Magritte - Time Transfixed (1932)

Preller’s work is

surrealistic because he infuses the ordinary with elements of a dream world.

The Kraal (1948)

The Kraal (1948)inherits the infinite space and dreamlike atmosphere of works by Surrealists such as Salavador Dali. Preller’s objects are in a process of transformation, and the giant candle and phallic tower take on an iconic significance. The tribal architecture takes on anthropomorphic qualities.

Salvador Dali - The Persistence of Memory (1931)

The surrealistic qualities of his style are frequently rooted in the exoticism of Africa, its past, and its traditions.

Collected images (1952)

Collected Images (1952)

shares the fascination of metamorphosis in works by the Surrealists. The painting illusionistically sets up a three-dimensional container of box-like recesses which house the collection of images that have become part of Preller’s paintings, such as candles, eggs, tribal figures, heroic torsos, and so on. He is concerned with how the objects appear to have a life of their own and

metamorphosise into something else, defying our expectations. Some objects appear to be miniature versions of “real-life” figures, while others appear to break through the walls of the room-like partitions in which they have been placed. Preller works with a kind of

“Magic Realism”

in which the illusionistic evocation of exotic artefacts is illusionistically made part of the spectator’s world.

Hieratic women (1955)

The stick-like limbs of the figures are derived from Ndebele dolls. The figure on the left is a surrealistic “double image”, or visual pun, deriving from a sea- shell which Preller had picked up on a Seychelles island. The presentation of woman as breakable object may be inherited from Surrealism.

Woman with Lyre (1956)

Woman with Lyre (1956)shows the influence of Dogon sculpture on Preller. The Dogon live as a reclusive tribe in Mali, south of the Sahara Desert, developing a culture and mythology related to astrological beliefs in Sirius – the brilliant Dog Star. (Studies in the late 1940s proved that their beliefs were grounded in astrological accuracy.) Preller uses objects as the basis for transforamtion in these works. The volumetric forms of Dogon sculpture influence his representation of the human figure, while the realtionship between tribal forms and cosmological symbols takes on the quality of science fiction.

Vase and Head (1956)

In Vase and Head (1956), Prellerjuxtaposes a head that recalls African or archaic sculpture with a chipped vase on which a scrollingfloral pattern appears. It is tempting to search for a hidden meaning in works such as this, although the painting appears to resist obvious interpretation. His art is a generally a private meditation, and objects appear to be imbued with a personalsignificance rather than with an overt symbolism. The compositionis strengthened by four rectangular blocks. The alternating warm and cool colours produce subtle spatial shifts, while the mind is teased by the enigmatic imagery.

Max Ernst - The Robing of the Bride

As with Surrealism, processes of tranformation become tied to esoteric rituals whose purpose is known only to the artist.

The Grand Mapogga(1957) continues the idea of associating indigenous, “exotic” cultures with surrealistic tranformation.

Figure is a replica of two studies carried out in 1951.Conceptualised imagery represents an intermediate state between realistic forms and enigmatic figurations.

The subject of this canvas is the matriarch of the Ndebele (or Mapogga tribe), whose kraals surrounded Pretoria where Preller lived.

The tribe’s traditions, women’sregalia and uniquely ornamented architecture was a source of fascination for Preller.

Rene Magritte- Philosophy inthe Boudoir (1947)

Salvador Dali - Gala and the Angelus of Millet Immediately Preceding the Arrival of the Conic Anamorphoses (1933)

In The Grand Mapogga figures transform into objects,

into architecture, into space.

The play in scale is both playful and slightly disorientating.

Rene Magritte - Castle of the Pyrenees

The Candle (1948)

Preller’s service with the Field Ambulance Corps in North Africa caused him to be haunted by memories of front-line operating theatres and mutilated bodies. Throughout his post-war oeuvre the fragility of life is often explored in miniature still-lives. In The Candle (1948), one is reminded of the flickering transience of life.

Still Life with a Painting, Candles, Eggs and a Knife (1948)

This theme is continued in

Still Life with a Painting,

Candles, Eggs and a Knife (1948).

Here the eggs symbolise embryonic life, or life that has not yet begun. The knife hints at ever-present destruction, termination and division. The pictorial imagery focused on the cycle of birth, life and death refers to the vanitas still-lifes by seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish artists.

The picture within the picture evokes the idea of limbo – or a place between life and death, with miniature figures moving through time. The lute recalls merriment in life, while the harp refers to the journey of the afterlife.

Discovery (1959), the central panel of a mural, shows no awareness of the pain experienced by the indigenous people of Africa or black Africans. The notion of discovery, far from being associated with colonialism and / or segregation, is identified with a lush land of utopian promise that is Western as much as it is African.

Unlike works by Sekoto which depict the harsh conditions under which urban black South Africans lived, Preller’s figures are always rural and involved in idealised activity.

gerard sekoto (1913- 1993). write a paragraph of analysis on the sekoto work, using the following...

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