THE ARTISTS

William Kentridge

William Kentridge is undoubtedly the best known South African artist, currently in demand by major institutions all over the world. Working with what is in essence a very restricted technique - charcoal drawings with limited touches of pastel colour - Kentridge has deployed these drawings into an oeuvre of astounding depth. The drawings have been used as the basis for a series of animated films by the very simple technique of drawing, filming a few frames, erasing, then drawing some more and so on.

Sydney Kumalo

Sydney Kumalo, internationally known above all for his work as a sculptor, was born in 1935 in Johannesburg. From 1952 to 1959 he attended the sculpture classes of the London-born Cecil Skotnes, probably South Africa’s most famous artist, and of Eduardo Villa in the Polly Art Centre in Johannesburg. Kumalo’s works are also displayed in many public and private collections in South Africa, Europe and the USA. Sydney Kumalo was equally, if not more important in his function as a teacher; he, more than anyone else in South Africa, has influenced the generation born between 1950 and 1965.

Dylan Lewis

Born in 1964, Johannesburg, South Africa. In 1982 he studied Fine Art at Cape Technikon in Cape Town. From 1985 – 1989 he studied painting under Ryno Swart, Ruth Prowse School of Art, Cape Town and mastered taxidermy and museum display. In 1995 he was invited to Cordova, Alaska to represent South Africa at Artists for Nature Foundation Expedition. In 1998 Lewis’s newly renovated Stellenbosch studio opening attended by HRH Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. He then commenced work for international travelling exhibitions and completed the monumental sculpture of White Rhino.

Fred Schimmel

Fred Schimmel is a much sought after artist. Over 40 years, he has earned himself an uncontested place in the South African art world. His more than 50 solo exhibitions and participation in numerous group exhibitions as well as the inclusion of his works in many private and public collections here and abroad, bears witness of this fact. His versatility as painter, graphic artist and designer and his masterly techniques reflect a continuous growth of creativity. In his abstract landscapes, colour, form and content are organically integrated so as to appeal both to the heart as well as the mind.

Nicolas Moreton

Nicolas Moreton is one of the rare artists who is much loved by critics and public alike and that stern arbiter Brian Sewell says ‘he is among his

generation, unrivalled in technique’. He has been the subject of numerous articles and TV programmes as his uniquely original approach has the ability to provoke surprise as well as pleasure.

Durant Sihlali

Durant Sihlali worked across many media, and was one of the few contemporary artists who lived through the early years of the building of contemporary South African art. become widespread in the 1990s. He exhibited innovative installations at the first and second Johannesburg Biennales and his work continues to be sought out for important local and international shows. While he is a very significant figure in the founding generation of South African modernist art history, he has also been an important artistic force in post-Apartheid contemporary South African art (1990 to the present).

Anton Smit

With works permanently on display at the Pretoria and Pietersburg Art museums and major art galleries across the counrty, and the Anton Smit Sculpture Museum at the Millennium Art Gallery, Groenkloof, Pretoria, Anton Smit is fast becoming one of South Africa's more important sculptors.  International recognition came during 1990 in the form of exhibitions in Rome and Milan, an invitation to exhibit in New York and Hong Kong as well as a return exhibition in Italy in 1993. More exhibitions have followed in Bonn, Washington, Singapore and Koln.

Lionel Smit

Lionel Smit, son of Anton Smit, was born in Pretoria in 1982. He has been actively exhibiting since 1999, which include sculpture and painting. He has been very successful in exhibitions in Pretoria, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Kempton park, Potchefstroom as well as internationally, namely in London, Los Angeles and Ireland. Lionel Smit's works are part of numerous corporate and private collections.

Johannes von Stumm

During a visit to Paris, Johannes von Stumm was deeply moved by the power and beauty which he saw in Rodin¹s sculpture; he immediately began to work figuratively with clay and plaster, first at home and then at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich; six months spent in a quiet Italian village strengthened his desire to test the potential of glass, stone and steel combinations. His unique combination of these three different materials has attracted public and critical acclaim in a decade of successful exhibitions, both in Britain and abroad. His startlingly original sculpture, which engages continually with risk and a defiance of accepted laws, joins iron, granite and glass to create abstract or reduced figurative works in which apparently conflicting materials exist in complex harmony.

Frank Benson

Frank Benson was born in 1976 in Virginia, USA and he studied at Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, and Master of Fine Arts, University of California, Los Angeles. He participated in the world-touring Uncertain States of America - American Art in the 3rd Millennium curated by Daniel Birnbaum, Gunnar B. Kvaran and Hans Ulrich Obrist which was exhibited at the Serpentine Gallery in 2007.

Stephane Graff primarily works in painting and photography. His oeuvres ranges from monochrome oil paintings to mixed media assemblage as well as adapting vintage photographic techniques such as gum dichromate and bromoil. Stephane worked in Morocco for five years, creating paintings and sculpture in mixed media such as sand, earth and pigments. Often abstract , with references to the crumbling walls of the ancient city, these paintings have an emphasis on surfaceand texture. The influence of ancient Egypt and African art often lend his works a primitive and tribal flavor. Other themes include a series of landscapes based on satellite images and a collection of platinum photographs titled Timeless Morocco.

Deborah Bell

The international award-winning artists Deborah Bell studied for her BA and her BA Honours at the University of Witwatersrand and in 1986 she completed her MA in Fine arts. Over the years Deborah travelled extensively and in 1986 she spent two months in Paris where she worked at the Cite Internationale des Arts. She describes herself as a seasonal painter and says that variety is what she loves in every aspect of her life. Through her art she tries to show how she thinks about who we are in this world and she tries to make the invisible visible. Her work has been seen locally as well as internationally, including countries such as the United Kingdom, the USA, Canada, Germany, France and Holland, and it is represented in public as well as private collections here and abroad.

Ndikhumbule Ngqinambi

Ndikhumbule Ngqinambi was born in Cape Town in 1977. After high school, he was part of Community Arts Projects in 2000 and 2001. From 2006 to 2007 Ndikhumbule attended the AFDA School of motion picture and performance. As a painter Ndikhumbule focuses on the contrast between survival and living. He likes to concentrate on the Xhosa culture, since that is where he comes from, but he would like to research and get to know a society or clan from Italy, so that he can find out how their living and survival stories connect and collide with his own.

Maurice Van Essche

Maurice Van Essche was born in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1906. He studied art at the Brussels Academy. In 1930 Maurice became a member of the group “La Jeune Peinture Belge” and won the silver medal at the International Exhibition in Antwerp. He continued to study art in the south of France in 1933 and also had group, as well as one-man exhibitions, in the same year. Maurice founded the Continental School of Art in Cape Town in 1946 and he was a foundation member of the International Art Club in 1948. In 1952 he was appointed as a lecturer in Fine Art at the Michaelis School in Cape Town and 10 years later was appointed as a professor, but he retired from the school in 1970 and moved to France in 1971 untill he passed away in 1977.

Cecil Skotnes

Cecil Skotnes was born in East London, South Africa, in 1926. In 1950 he completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree at the University of Witwatersrand. His lifelong mission was to nurture talent and encourage to creativity, especially in situations where apartheid had excluded this possibility. So it is no wonder that he accepted the post as the Cultural Recreation Officer at the “Non-Europeans Affairs Department”, where he wanted to create a place where he could give talented young black adults the chance to get professional training and to have a career in art. Cecil also was awarded with a gold medal by the State President for his service to the country and his contribution to the de-racialision of South African Art. On the 4th of April 2009 Cecil passed away, but he will always be remembered as a prominent South African artist.