Impressionist Modern
Alexis Preller
(1911 - 1975 )Impressionist Modern Alexis Preller was born in 1911 in Pretoria and went to school at Pretoria Boys High School, where he was always drawn to the theatre and was involved with many productions. Later he worked as a clerk for some time before persuading...
George Milwa Mnyalaza Pemba
(1912 - 2001)Impressionist Modern “I aim to paint my people as I see them. I also like to depict beautiful and dignified mountains, rivers and landscapes of South Africa.” George Pemba. One of South Africa’s pioneer black painters, George Milwa Mnyaluza Pemba, was...
Gerard Sekoto
(1913 - 1993 )Impressionist Modern “I am glad that people owning my works are communicating in spirit. That makes me feel happy and puts up lights into the dubious sides of my life, to know there are people spiritually communicating in many places upon earth.” Gerard...
Irma Stern
(1894 - 1966) Impressionist Modern “And what she knows of Africa, the heart of it; all her pictures breathe it out…” – Cape Times, 1929 Irma Stern was a prominent South African artist who attained national and international recognition in her lifetime. Born in the...
Jacob Hendrik Pierneef
(1886 - 1957 )Modern Impressionist Jacob Hendrik Pierneef was born in 1886 in Pretoria to Dutch immigrant parents. He left South Africa for Holland as part of the deportation during the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) and it was there that Pierneef attended the Rotterdam...
Maria Magdalena (Maggie) Laubser
(1886 - 1973)Modern Impressionist Maria Magdalena (Maggie) Laubser was born in the Malmesbury district, Cape Town, in 1886. She attended Bloemhof Seminary in Stellenbosch until the age of 15. She later attended singing lessons in Cape Town, where she became involved...
Maud Frances Eyston Sumner
(1902 - 1985 )Modern Impressionist “As a person I am South African and English, but as a painter I am French.” – Maud Sumner South African artist Maud Sumner once commented; “as a person I am South African and English, but as a painter I am French” (Berman, E....
Ruth Everard-Haden
(1902 - 1992 )Impressionist Modern Ruth Everard-Haden was born in 1904 at Nottingham Road in KwaZulu-Natal, as the first daughter of the artist Bertha Everard. Born into a remarkably creative family of women painters, Ruth’s mother, Bertha along with her sister Edith...
Wolf Kibel
(1902 - 1938)Impressionist Modern Wolf Kibel was born in Grodzisk, a village near Warsaw, the capital city of Poland in 1903. He was the son of a Jewish Cantor and the ritual slaughterer of the village. As a young boy, he used to carve grotesques from his father’s...
Post War
Bettie Cilliers-Barnard
(1914 - 2010)Post War“I paint because I cannot neglect to paint. The urge to create stems from the search for contact with humankind, with nature and with the Supreme Being. Artistic expression reflects what is true and authentic in life. Art is universal.” Bettie...
Christo Coetzee
(1929 - 2001 )Post War“The unreasonable, the ridiculous and the absurd in everyday life became its most interesting ingredient, like the currants in a bun.” – Christo Coetzee. Christo Coetzee’s success in the international art world was a far cry from his humble...
Claude Marie Madeleine Bouscharain
(1922 - 2020)Post WarClaude Bouscharain’s canvases are pervaded by a provocative and vaguely disturbing atmosphere – a sense that the viewer is being provided with a view into rather than of the personages who inhabit the distorted space. Her colour combinations...
Dorothy Moss Kay
(1886 - 1964 ) Post WarDorothy Elvery was born at Greystones, County Wicklow, Ireland, in 1886. At the age of 14 she began studying figure painting at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art and the Royal Hibernian Academy School, and later in Paris. Her work was...
Edoardo Villa
(1915 - 2011)Contemporary Edoardo Villa (1915-2011) is often called Johannesburg’s ‘unofficial official’ sculptor. Anecdotally, he has contributed the most public sculptures of any single artist in the city where he spent the majority of his life, and certainly the...
Eleanor Frances Esmonde-White
(1914 - 2007)Post WarEsmonde-White was born 1914 in Dundee, Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa. Not much is known about her upbringing, but she did experience formal training in the arts, starting from 1932, when she enrolled at the University of Natal. Here she was taught...
Frederik Bester Howard (Erik) Laubscher
(1927 - 2013 )Post War Born in Tulbagh in the Western Cape, Erik Laubscher aspired to a life as an artist from a young age. However, these ambitions were hindered by several financial constraints in his early life, but ultimately his creative fervor and driving...
Gregoire Johannes Boonzaier
(1909 - 2005)Post War“I am very particular about my paintings and would like them to last. It is pleasing to think that what you have made today and what is regarded now as a good painting, and which pleases and stimulates people today, will still do the same a...
John Marsden Dronsfield
(1900 - 1951)Post WarJohn Dronsfield was born in Lancashire and, although he studied briefly at the Manchester School of Art, was mainly self-taught. From 1923 until 1939 he worked in advertising and theatre design in London, continuing with stage-set design on his...
Paul Jenkins
(1923 - 2012 )Post WarThe paintings of Paul Jenkins have come to represent the spirit, vitality, and invention of post-World War II American abstraction. Employing an unorthodox approach to paint application, Jenkins is as much identified with the process of...
Peter Edward Clarke
(1929 - 2014)Post War“The child in me has accompanied the adult that I am into old age. So, as far as I am concerned, it is essential to be honest and to be irreverent at times and to have a sense of humour as well.” Peter Clarke Born in Simonstown 1929, Peter Clarke...
Robert Griffiths Hodgins
(1920 - 2010)Post War“For me, it is very simple. The act of painting at a particular moment is able, for reasons I neither understand, nor even try to understand, to open up the whole world of my experience, my thinking, my aspirations.” Robert Hodgins London-born...
Stanley Faraday Pinker
(1924 - 2012 )Post War“My aim is to communicate with everybody, not selectively. I feel that art, literature, music, and painting provide spiritual support. They should move the spirit and make us aware, and in that way I intend my paintings to make statements… I...
Stella Shawzin
(1923 - 2020 )The Athlete Shawzin (1920-2021, South African) was a prolific sculptor known for the variety of materials she worked in, including wood, bronze, metal and marble, the latter of which she often acquired from the famous quarries at Carrara. Working from...
Walter Whall Battiss
(1906 - 1982 )Post War“Some look upon my art as a fun thing, but the fun is only the surface of something very much deeper…I’ll leave it to the future to discover that it’s much more than that.” Walter Battiss. Battiss’ long career as an artist has been devoted to the...