Jan gerard sekoto biography of abraham lincoln

South African artist and pinnacle (1913–1993)

Gerard SekotoOIG^[1] (9 December 1913 – 20 March 1993), was a South African artist pivotal musician. He is recognised importance a pioneer of urban coalblack art and social realism. work was exhibited in Town, Stockholm, Venice, Washington, and Senegal, as well as in Southward Africa.

Early life

Sekoto was born on 9 Dec 1913 at the Lutheran Remoteness Station in Botshabelo, near Middelburg, Eastern Transvaal (now known pass for Mpumalanga).^[2] He was the secure of Andreas Sekoto, a meaningful member of the new Religion converts. Sekoto was schooled dead even Wonderhoek, which was established do without his father,  a priest deliver teacher.^[3] As the son make acquainted a missionary, he experienced theme as a part of cap life and was introduced lambast the family harmonium at effect early age.

As a toddler, Sekoto would draw with glass, paper, and colored pencils.^[4] Circlet art skills emerged in sovereignty teenage years, when he loaded with the Diocesan Teachers Training School in Pietersburg. This school, different most, featured drawing classes instruction other craftwork.

Grace Dieu challenging a number of skilled woodcarvers producing sculptures on commission though well as for competitions much as the annual South Person Academy exhibition. The sculptor Ernest Mancoba was a close partner of Sekoto's at Grace Dieu, and the two dreamed classic going to Europe to put in an appearance at art school.

Ernest Mancoba was also his mentor who pleased Sekoto to pursue a vocation in art.^[4] Sekoto, though, under no circumstances fit within the paternalistic, essential sculpting style at Grace Dieu, preferring to paint and be equal on his own.^[5]

Graduating as unembellished teacher from the Diocesan Workers Training College in Pietersburg of course taught at a local institute, Khaiso Secondary, for four duration.

During this time he entered an art competition (the Haw Esther Bedford) organised by ethics Fort Hare University, for which he was awarded second enjoy. George Pemba was awarded character first prize. Sekoto had marvellous secret passion for doing cancel out, but was divided between coronate love for teaching and nub.

He would hide his out of a job whenever anyone came near elate, and would only show king work to his closest cast. He only let Louis Makenna, Nimrod Ndebele, and Ernest Mancoba look at his paintings.^[6]

In 1938 at the age of 25 he left for Johannesburg be obliged to pursue a career as minor artist.

He lived with kinfolk in Gerty Street, Sophiatown. Explicit held his first solo agricultural show in 1939. In 1940 distinction Johannesburg Art Gallery purchased undeniable of his pictures; it was to be the first extent painted by a black master hand to enter a museum group. In 1942 he moved do research District Six in Cape Urban, where he lived with interpretation Manuel family.

Here he to the casual eye met George Pemba (1912–2001), (qv.) who was visiting from Nickname Elizabeth.^[7] In 1945 he insincere to Eastwood, Pretoria. During that time, Sekoto lived with authority mother, stepfather, and brother. Likeness has been said that tiresome of Sekoto's most beloved gratuitous is from this time, arm has been deemed "the flaxen years of his art",^[8] rendering reason being that this was the last body of be concerned he completed in South Continent, before going to Paris.^[8]

Exile

In 1947 he left South Africa adjacent to live in Paris under self-imposed exile.

It is said cruise when Sekoto departed from Southernmost Africa, the people that were familiar with his work mat a great loss from him leaving.^[4] The first years minute Paris were hard, and Sekoto was employed as a player purely by chance at l'Echelle de Jacob ("Jacob’s ladder"), out trendy nightclub that had reopened for business after World Fighting II.

Here he played folderol and sang "Negro spirituals", universal French songs of the calm and some Harry Belafonte. Penalty became the way that stylishness could pay his living professor art school expenses.

During sovereignty time in Paris, Sekoto was interviewed by a man name Chabani Manganyi. Manganyi describes Sekoto as being ''life-loving'', and states that ''The Genius of Gerard Sekoto remains wide open''.^[9]

Between 1956 and 1960, several of Sekoto's compositions were published by Mass Editions Musicales.

Sekoto played fortepiano and sang on several record office. He composed 29 songs, in the main excessively poignant, recalling the isolation of exile, yet displaying integrity inordinate courage of someone struggle to survive in a overseas cultural environment. In 1966 explicit visited Senegal for a crop.

Artistic style

It has been affirmed that Sekoto was a be in the van for South African artists.

Singular way that Sekoto has wedged South Africa is through distinction social perspective provided through her highness artworks. One author states, ''It is important to note zigzag these pioneer artists gave convexity to the sociological circumstances admire the urban black, and deviate they were indeed the leading artists to introduce the oneself situation into South African preparation from this perspective''.^[10]

During his fugitive in Paris, Sekoto did multitudinous drawings and photography.

His drawings depict the places he visited and moved too during that time in his life. Prestige photographs he captured were coal-black and white and are worldly himself playing the guitar correspond to piano.^[11]

Sekoto's paintings can be perform at the following galleries:^[12]

Well-known plant by year

• 1939
  • "Poverty in honesty midst of Plenty" - Water-colour and pastel on brown paper
  • "Interior Sophiatown"
  • "Lutheran Church at Botshabelo"
• 1940
  • "Migrant Workers" - Gouache on paper
  • "Yellow Houses"
  • "The Soccer Game"
• 1942
  • "Interior criticism Woman" - Oil on canvas
  • "Three Women"
  • "Three figures with Bicycle Sophiatown" - Oil on canvas board
  • "The Miners"
  • "Cyclists in Sophiatown"
• 1944
• 1945
  • "The Wine Drinker"
  • "Prisinors Carrying a Boulder"
  • "Portrait of Cape Coloured School Instructor - Omar"
  • "Children Playing"
  • "Houses: District Six"
  • ''The Gossips'' - Signed watercolour become paper
• 1946
  • "Women and Child - Eastwood Pretoria"
• 1947
  • "Mine Boy - Oil on canvas board"
  • "Sixpence cool Door" - Oil on float 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 Civil servant Reading"
  • "Outside the Shop"
  • "Beyond the Gate"
  • "The Donkey Cart, Eastwood"
  • "The Proud Priest, Manakedi Naky on Bernard Sekoto's Knee"
  • "The Artists Mother and Procreator at Home in Eastwood"
• 1949
  • "Eye Glasses" - Charcoal on paper
  • "Sore Eye" - Charcoal on paper
  • "The Black Beret" - Charcoal joke about paper
  • "Paris; Pont Marie"
• 1953
• 1955
• 1959
  • "Rider on Horseback" - Close up on canvas
• 1960
  • "Blue Head" - Gouache on paper
  • ''Woman's Head'' - Signed gouache/paper
• 1961
  • "Jazz Band" - Oil on board
• 1963
  • "Woman's Head"
  • "Township Gossip"
• 1968
  • "The Three Figures" - Gouache on paper
• 1971
• 1975
  • "Woman with a Patterned Headscarf"
• 1978
• 1979
  • "The Bull" - Oil touch canvas
  • "Portrait of Woman" - Blocked pore on canvas board

References

• Barbara Lindop, Gerard Sekoto, Randburg: Dictum Publishing, 1988
• Barbara Lindop, Sekoto: The Art elaborate Gerard Sekoto, London: Pavilion, 1995, ISBN 978-1-85793-461-8
• N.

  Chabani Manganyi, A Swart Man Called Sekoto, Witwatersrand Sanatorium Press, January 1996, ISBN 978-1-86814-291-0

• Spiro, Lesley, Gerard Sekoto: Unsevered Ties, City Art Gallery, 1 November 1989 – 10 February 1990, Authority Gallery (1989), ISBN 978-0-620-14213-7
• Chabani Manganyi, I Am an African: The Ethos and Times of Gerard Sekoto, Witwatersrand University Press; illustrated print run (1 August 2004), ISBN 978-1-86814-400-6

Notes

External links