Gerard Sekoto

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Gerard Sekoto (9 December 1913 - 20 March 1993), was a South African artist and musician. He is recognised as the pioneer of urban black art and social realism. He has had exhibitions in Paris, Stockholm, Venice, Washington, Senegal as well as in South Africa.

Early life

Sekoto was born on 9 December 1913 at the Lutheran Mission Station in Botshabelo near Middelburg, Eastern Transvaal (now known as Mpumalanga).[1] As the son of a missionary, music was a part of his life, and he was introduced to the family harmonium at an early age.

On graduating as a teacher from the Diocesan Teachers Training College in Pietersburg he taught at a local school, Khaiso Secondary, for four years. During this time he entered an art competition (the May Esther Bedford) organised by the Fort Hare University, for which he was awarded second prize. George Pemba was awarded the first prize.

In 1938 at the age of 25 he left for Johannesburg to pursue a career as an artist. He lived with relatives in Gerty Street, Sophiatown. He held his first solo exhibition in 1939. In 1940 the Johannesburg Art Gallery purchased one of his pictures; it was to be the first picture painted by a black artist to enter a museum collection. In 1942 he moved to District Six in Cape Town where he lived with the Manuel family. In 1945 he moved to Eastwood, Pretoria.

Exile

In 1947 he left South Africa to live in Paris under self-imposed exile. The first years in Paris were hard, and Sekoto was employed as a pianist purely by chance at l’Echelle de Jacob (Jacob’s ladder), a trendy nightclub that had reopened for business after World War II. Here he played jazz and sang ‘Negro Spirituals’, popular French songs of the period and some Harry Belafonte. Music became the way that he could pay his living and art school expenses.

Between 1956 and 1960, several of Sekoto’s compositions were published by Les Editions Musicales. Sekoto played piano and sang on several records. He composed 29 songs, mostly excessively poignant, recalling the loneliness of exile, yet displaying the inordinate courage of someone battling to survive in a foreign cultural environment.

In 1966 he visited Senegal for a year.

Sekoto's paintings became political in the 1970s due to apartheid in his home country. In 1989 the Johannesburg Art Gallery honoured him with a retrospective exhibition and the University of Witwatersrand with an honorary doctorate.[2]


He died on 20 March 1993 at a retirement home outside Paris.

Well known works by year

  • 1939
    • "Poverty in the midst of Plenty" - Watercolour and pastel on brown paper
    • "Interior Sophiatown"
    • "Lutheran Church at Botshabelo"
  • 1940
    • "Migrant Workers" - Gouache on paper
    • "Yellow Houses"
    • "The Soccer Game"
  • 1942
    • "Interior with Woman" - Oil on canvas
    • "Three Women"
    • "Three figures with Bicycle Sophiatown" - Oil on canvas board
    • "The Miners"
    • "Cyclists in Sophiatown"
  • 1944
    • "Prison Yard"
  • 1945
    • "The Wine Drinker"
    • "Prisinors Carrying a Boulder"
    • "Portrait of Cape Coloured School Teacher - Omar"
    • "Children Playing"
    • "Houses: District Six"
  • 1946
    • "Women and Child - Eastwood Pretoria"
  • 1947
    • "Mine Boy - Oil on canvas board"
    • "Sixpence a Door" - Oil on canvas board
    • "Song of the Pick" - Oil on canvas board
    • "Mary Dikeledi Sekoto"
    • "Self-Portrait"
    • "Portrait of Anna, The Artist's Mother"
    • "Portrait of a Young Man Reading"
    • "Outside the Shop"
    • "Beyond the Gate"
    • "The Donkey Cart, Eastwood"
    • "The Proud Father, Manakedi Naky on Bernard Sekoto's Knee"
    • "The Artists Mother and Stepfather at Home in Eastwood"
  • 1949
    • "Eye Glasses" - Charcoal on paper
    • "Sore Eye" - Charcoal on paper
    • "The Black Beret" - Charcoal on paper
    • "Paris; Pont Marie"
  • 1953
    • "Besotho Women"
  • 1955
    • "Woman and Children"
  • 1959
    • "Rider on Horseback" - Oil on canvas
  • 1960
    • "Blue Head" - Gouache on paper
  • 1961
    • "Jazz Band" - Oil on board
  • 1963
    • "Woman's Head"
    • "Township Gossip"
  • 1968
    • "The Three Figures" - Gouache on paper
  • 1971
    • "Township Scene"
  • 1975
    • "Woman with a Patterned Headscarf"
  • 1978
  • 1979
    • "The Bull" - Oil on canvas
    • "Portrait of Woman" - Oil on canvas board

References

  • Barbara Lindop, Gerard Sekoto, Randburg: Dictum Publishing, 1988
  • Barbara Lindop, Sekoto : The Art of Gerard Sekoto, Pavilion, London, 1995, ISBN 978-1-85793-461-8
  • N. Chabani Manganyi, A Black Man Called Sekoto, Witwatersrand University Press, January 1996, ISBN 978-1-86814-291-0
  • Spiro, Lesley, Gerard Sekoto: Unsevered Ties, Johannesburg Art Gallery, 1.11.1989-10.2.1990, The Gallery (1989), ISBN 978-0-620-14213-7
  • Chabani Manganyi, I Am an African: The Life and Times of Gerard Sekoto, Witwatersrand University Press; illustrated edition (Aug 1 2004), ISBN 978-1-86814-400-6

Notes

  1. ↑ John Peffer.Art and the end of apartheid.1991.University of Virginia Press.p.2.
  2. ↑ Lesley Spiro.Gerard Sekoto: unsevered ties, Johannesburg Art Gallery.1989.The Gallery.p.60.

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