George Milwa Mnyalaza Pemba

(1912 – 2001)

“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 born in Hill’s Kraal in Korsten, Port Elizabeth on the 2 April 1912, the second youngest of six children to parents Titus and Rebecca. His father was a foreman at a shoe factory and an elder of their Presbyterian church, whilst his mother’s side of the family were craftsmen, dressmakers and tailors. As a child Pemba’s father encouraged him to draw and to paint, which he did in their family home, creating portraits from his father’s photographs. He continued to concentrate on portraits for his career and looked closely at depicting the rural and urban genre, especially that of the Eastern Cape where he spent most of his life.

Pemba was trained as a teacher, but worked for the Lovedale Printing Press and as a clerk in Port Elizabeth. To make a better income he then worked as a grocer from the 1950s to the late 1970s, all the while continuing with his artwork. As with the majority of rural schools, art and drawing was never taught as a subject and was quickly dismissed by teachers and the board of education during this period. Pemba later briefly attended the University at Fort Hare and the University of Rhodes, where he developed his skills in watercolour, although he remained mainly self-taught in the other mediums he used. Pemba’s exposure to oil paintings was from looking at mainly European modernist works from his teachers’ books, which he began to collect for himself. The artists who he admired most were French Impressionists, including Renoir, Monet, Toulouse Lautrec, Degas and Gauguin. He found himself 50 years after these artists applying, sometimes erratically, the techniques and approaches that they had used, but in a different cultural context entirely.

Pemba’s depictions of life scenes expose his great interest in local life and local people and a great sense of narrative is present within these works. Yet, to look at this genre as a simple ‘record’ of township life does not allow for the complicated constructions of a historical context to be formed. Pemba’s varied borrowing and knowledge of subject matter, including his portraits, forms a personal and ambiguous presentation of experiments that he undertook, which results in a style that is difficult to categorise.

George Pemba’s work illustrates a universal quality and timelessness that has secured his prominence within South African historical art. The deliberation of composition and use of colour in his works create a richness and intensity that is a reflection of the artist himself. Through the recognition he has received in the last decade, Pemba is considered one of South Africa’s most prominent artists and places him in the foreground of South African art.