Mother with Child by Gerard Sekoto POA
S1011. Extremely rare and unique oil on canvas by the celebrated African artist Gerard Sekoto. Circa 1950 -1953. 25” x. 22” Framed. Sekoto’s work is highly collectable and can be an excellent long term investment. One of his paintings, “Donkeys” (see photo) was sold last year by Bonhams for £277,000. Please contact Terry for the price if this piece. Gerard Sekoto was a South African artist and musician. He is recognized as the pioneer of urban black art and social realism. His work was exhibited in Paris, Stockholm, Venice, Washington, and Senegal, as well as in South Africa.
Biography.
Gerard Sekoto's contributions to South African art and music have been vital elements in South Africa's cultural development in the twentieth century. Most notably, Sekoto was the first black artist to have a picture purchased for a museum collection, following an acquisition by the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 1940. The artist's rural upbringing in the Lutheran Mission Station in Botshabelo and periods of residence in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Pretoria nourished his perspective on the South African people, primarily the impoverished black population.
Sekoto (1913 -1993) had trained as a school teacher but decided, as a self-taught artist, to launch his professional art career in 1938. He left the rural areas of northern South Africa to travel to Johannesburg where free association between different races was still possible. Here he was introduced to the liberal artistic White community and amongst others, met an artist, Judith Gluckman, who offered to teach him how to paint with oils. He quickly assimilated these techniques and was soon recognised as a notable artist in Johannesburg art circles. He wished to familiarise himself with the country and in 1942, having sold enough paintings to pay his way, travelled to Cape Town to live in District 6 and then to Eastwood, Pretoria in 1945. Apartheid policies, legislated from 1948, resulted in the destruction of Sophiatown, District 6 and Eastwood in the 1950s. Sekoto's paintings remain as vivid historical records of these vibrant urban environments and the people who lived there.
In 1947 Sekoto left South Africa in voluntary exile for Paris, planning to expose himself to what he believed would be the centre of the international art world. The artist would never to return to the country that inspired his stirring and colourful depictions of cultural activity and racial tensions. Sekoto's position as one of South Africa's first and most important modernists and social realists has been reinforced by a retrospective exhibition of his work at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 1989, an honorary doctorate from the University of Witwatersrand, the presence of his work at the South African National Gallery, record sales of his paintings at recent auctions in London and Johannesburg, and a recent mural-painting project featuring Sekoto's work as painted by apprentices though the Gerard Sekoto Foundation.
Artist Biography
The tradition of black artists in South Africa has, until recently, been neglected. However, in the last ten years a new art history has developed from a growing awareness of the omissions of the past. At the forefront of this reassessment is the work of Gerard Sekoto.
Born on 9 December 1913 at Botshabelo, a German Lutheran Mission Station in the then Easten Transvaal, (now Bophuthatswane).
When Sekoto was five years old, his father was posted by the Lutheran Church to their mission school on the farm Wonderhoek, also in the Middelburg District. Here Sekoto spent his most formative years. He nurtured the memories of his rural childhood for the rest of his life, and in many of his letters he dwells at great length on the experiences of his youth and early family life. The love and security he was shown as a child were a source of solace and strength during the difficult years of his exile.
Sekoto started drawing early but did not have access to colour pencils until he was a teenager. The introduction to colour revolutionized his work. Periods of residence in Sophiatown, Johannesburg, District Six, Cape Town, and Eastwood, Pretoria produced vibrant and powerful pieces evoking both the colourful cultural activity and the tensions of the townships. The paintings from this time are historical records of a now extinct way of life. All three areas were bulldozed in the fifties and sixties. In 1947 Sekoto made the momentous decision to leave the country of birth and travel to Paris - like many voluntary and involuntary exiles, he was never to return to South Africa. France brought new inspiration and Sekoto re-worked many subjects and explored different themes, al characterized by a deep sense of humanity.
Towards the end of his life, Sekoto's art increasingly gained recognition mainly through the pioneering work of Barbara Lindop. Her research brought to life many paintings thought to have been lost, and, through her correspondence with Sekoto, she was able to confirm details of his life before his death in 1993. In this book, Lindop introduces the extraordinary life story of Gerard Sekoto accompanied by full colour plates of his most powerful, stirring works of art.
Artist CV
Artist Photo
1913: Born 9 December at Lutheran Mission School at Botshabelo near Middelburg, Transvaal.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2013: Gerard Sekoto: Song for Sekoto, Wits Art Museum, Johannesburg
1999: Drawings by Gerard Sekoto from the Sowetan Collection - Solo exhibition, Standard Bank Gallery (January)
1989:
Retrospective Exhibition, Johannesburg Art Gallery
Gertrude Posel Exhibition, Johannesburg
Rheinhold Cassirer Gallery, Cassirer Fine Art Gallery, Johannesburg (February)
Paris and South African Artists 1850 – 1965, South African National Gallery, Cape Town
1988:
Cassirer Fine Art Gallery, Johannesburg
South African National Gallery, Cape Town
Johannesburg Art Gallery
1987: Johannesburg Art Gallery
1986:
Young South African Artists, Academy Gallery, Paris
Participated in "Voices in Exile" a touring Exhibition of South African Artists in exile: Washington DC, USA
1984: South African National Gallery
1980:
Maison de I' Afrique, Paris
Johannesburg Art Gallery
Rand Afrikaans University, Johannesburg
1978: Galerie Art Premier, Paris
1975: Atlantic Gallery, Burg Street, Cape Town
1973:
Gallerie du Marais, Bourges, Paris (exhibition with Wilson Tiberio)
Pretoria Art Museum
1970:
Galleri BB, Denmark
Gallery Randers, Stockholm
1969: Christiane Colin Galerie, Île de Saint Louis, Paris
1968:
South African Association of Arts, Pretoria (opened by J le Grand, Delegue Generale de l’Alliance Francaise)
Senegalese Embassy, Paris
Galerie Marthe Nochy, Paris
1967: Théâtre Daniel Sorano, Dakar, Senegal (exhibition with Wilson Tiberio)
1966:
First International Festival of Negro Arts in Senegal
Republic Festival Exhibition, Pretoria
Adler Fielding Gallery, Johannesburg
1965: Adler Fielding Gallery, Johannesburg
1964:
Exhibition of African paintings at Nemours, France.
Adler Fielding Gallery, Johannesburg
1963:
Durban Art Gallery
Adler Fielding Gallery, Johannesburg
1962: Adler Fielding Gallery, Johannesburg
1961:
Galleria Santo Stefano, Venice
Adler Fielding Gallery, Johannesburg
1960:
Salon d'Automne, Paris
Lawrence Adler Gallery, Johannesburg
1958 - 1959: Lawrence Adler Gallery, Johannesburg
1956: Galerie Art Premier, Paris
1955
Petit Palais, Paris
Lawrence Adler Gallery, Johannesburg
Seventh Arts Festival, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Galerie Reflets de Paris, Vichy
1954: lD Bookseller's Gallery, Church Square, Cape Town
1953:
Galerie Saint Placide, Paris
Bulawayo, Rhodesia
1952:
Galerie Heyrene with Michel-Marie Puolin and Phillipe Marie Picard
One-man exhibition at the Galerie Saint Placide
Van Riebeeck Exhibition, Cape Town
1951: Exhibited in Stockholm, Sweden at Galerie Rålambshof with five other artists.
1950: One-man exhibition at the Vincent Gallery (Christies Gallery), Pretoria
