Ernest Mancoba

Ernest (Methuen) Mancoba
Born	(1904-08-29)August 29, 1904 Turffontein, Johannesburg, South Africa
Died	October 25, 2002(2002-10-25) (aged 98) Clamart, France
Nationality	South African, French
Field	Sculpture, Painting, Drawing
Movement	CoBrA, Tachisme
Awards	Egill Jacobsen Award (1989), Lee Krasner Award (1995-97),

Ernest (Methuen) Mancoba (29 August 1904-25 October 2002) was an avant-garde artist, born in South Africa, who spent the majority of his life in Europe.

Biography

Born in Johannesburg, Mancoba attended Fort Hare University, the South African Native College, and received his undergraduate degree from the University of South Africa by correspondence in 1937, while teaching English at the Khaiso Secondary School in Pietersburg. He left South Africa for Europe in 1938 when he received a scholarship to continue his studies in Paris, where he enrolled at the Ecole Nationale Superieue Arts Decoratifs.^[1] While in Paris he met fellow student Sonja Ferlov, whom he married. When the Germans occupied Paris during the Second World War, Mancoba was arrested and sent to a camp as a British subject.^[2] Mancoba moved with Ferlov to Denmark after the end of the war, and he became one of the founding members of the CoBrA group.^[2] In the 1950s, Mancoba returned to Paris, where he became a French citizen. He died near Paris in 2002, aged 98.

Mancoba began his artistic career as a sculptor, carving a number of religious works including the so-called "Bantu Madonna" (1929), which created a scandal because of its depiction of the Virgin Mary with "negroid" features. Mancoba gave up sculpture in 1950 and devoted himself to painting and drawing, in which he pioneered various approaches to abstraction.

Although Mancoba was an active participant and founder in CoBrA and in later artistic movements, his role received little attention in art historical scholarship, leading artist and scholar Rasheed Araeen to argue in 2004 that the erasure of Mancoba was the result of racism and ethnocentrism.^[3]

References

External links

• Themba ka Mathe, "The artist who died far from home".

Persondata
Name	Mancoba, Ernest
Alternative names
Short description	South African artist
Date of birth	1904-08-29
Place of birth	Turffontein, Johannesburg, South Africa
Date of death	2002-10-25
Place of death	Clamart, France