Gerard Sekoto

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Jan Gerard Sekoto (born December 9, 1913 in Botshabelo , South Africa , † March 20, 1993 in Nogent-sur-Marne , France ) was a South African painter and musician. He was the first black South African painter to achieve international success. His style is described as social realism .

Life

South Africa

Sekoto was born as the son of the evangelical missionary and teacher Andreas Sekoto and his wife Anne in Botshabelo near Middelburg in what was then the East Transvaal . He grew up on the Wonderhoek Farm and from 1930 attended the Anglican Grace Dieu Diocesan Training College near Pietersburg (now Polokwane), where he received an art-oriented teacher training. Here he also met the artist Ernest Mancoba , with whom he had a long friendship.

Sekoto taught for four years at the Khaiso Secondary School in Seshego near Pietersburg. In 1938 he took second place in a painting competition at the University of Fort Hare and moved to Johannesburg in the Sophiatown district to work as a painter. The teacher Roger Castle, a clergyman, supported him.

In 1939 he had his first group exhibition at the Gainsborough Gallery in Johannesburg ; In the following year it was the Johannesburg Art Gallery that acquired a picture from him and thus for the first time from a black man, the painting Yellow Houses, also Yellow Houses, a street in Sophiatown. In 1942 Sekoto moved to Cape Town in District Six , three years later to Eastwood in Pretoria . It was there that his picture, Song of the Pick, was created, which shows a number of black workers and a white overseer. In the 1940s, Sekoto mostly portrayed people and scenes from the South African townships . He sold many of his paintings and had several solo exhibitions.

France and Senegal

In 1947 Sekoto emigrated to Paris , which he saw as the “Mecca of art”. At first he had to make a living as a pianist and singer in night clubs; among other things he played jazz and sang spirituals. In 1948 the picture Sixpence a Door exhibited in the Tate Gallery found the admiration of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon , the mother of the future Queen Elizabeth II. In 1949 Sekoto had to spend some time in a clinic because of hallucinations . There he created portraits of fellow patients that reflect their mental illnesses. After his release, he began a relationship with Marthe Baillon that lasted until her death in 1976. Baillon was 19 years older and appeared under her maiden name Hennebert from 1911 to 1920 through an exchange of letters with Rainer Maria Rilke . Sekoto's previous tenant in the Baillons house was the American writer James Baldwin . Between 1956 and 1960 some of his compositions were published in Les Editions Musicales . In 1966, Sekoto moved to Senegal with his Brazilian painter colleague Tiberio Wilson (1923–2005) , at the invitation of the Senegalese President and poet Léopold Senghor . At first they lived in Dakar , then in the Casamance region . Due to an illness of his partner, Sekoto returned to Paris in 1967. Two years later he wrote an autobiography that was published in Présence Africaine magazine. Around 1970 his pictures took on an increasingly political character. In 1971 he had an exhibition in Paris with the South African Louis Maurice , with whom he had already exhibited in Cape Town in 1944. There were also exhibitions of Sekoto's works in Stockholm , Venice , Washington, DC , Senegal and South Africa. Subsequently, however, his work fell into oblivion.

In 1984 he was almost penniless and his apartment was given notice. From then on he lived at the expense of the French state in a home in Corbeil-Essonnes near Paris. After a traffic accident in which he broke both legs, he spent three years in the hospital in Draveil . During this time, the research carried out by Johannesburg art historian Barbara Lindop once again gave him national recognition; numerous paintings believed to be lost have been tracked down. In her research she received support from the literary man Mongane Wally Serote , Sekoto's nephew. In 1989, Sekoto had his own exhibition for the first time in the Johannesburg Art Gallery, in the same year he received an honorary doctorate from Johannesburg Witwatersrand University in absentia . Attempts to get him to return to South Africa failed.

After his recovery, Sekoto lived in a retirement home for artists in Nogent-sur-Marne, where he died in 1993. He was buried in Nogent-sur-Marne.

Sekoto's paintings are characterized by a partly expressionistic style with strong colors and unusual perspectives. He also made drawings, especially in the 1930s.

Awards

Others

  • In 1996 the South African Post issued several stamps with motifs based on Sekoto's paintings.
  • In 2004 the fusion band The Blue Heads, named after a series of paintings by Sekoto from the 1960s, released an album with songs by Sekoto.
  • The Gerard Sekoto Award has been presented annually by the Gerard Sekoto Foundation since 2004 . It is given to a young artist as part of the ABSA L'Atelier Art Awards and is linked to a three-month stay in Paris.
  • Yellow Houses, District Six, built between 1942 and 1945, was auctioned in London in 2011 for around £ 600,000 .

literature

  • Barbara Lindop: Gerard Sekoto. Dictum Publishing, Randburg 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, Johannesburg 1996, ISBN 978-1-86814-291-0 .
  • Lesley Spiro: Gerard Sekoto: Unsevered Ties. Johannesburg Art Gallery, November 1, 1989 - February 10, 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, Johannesburg 2004, ISBN 978-1-86814-400-6 .

Web links

Commons : Gerard Sekoto  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Portrait at craftandworld.com (English), accessed on January 23, 2015
  2. ↑ Gerard Sekoto. on www.art.co.za (English)
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h Portrait on the website of the Gerard Sekoto Foundation (English), accessed on January 22, 2015
  4. ↑ Biography at gerardsekotofoundation.com (English), accessed on January 23, 2015
  5. ↑ a b c d Sam Radithahlo: Forgotten Son . on web.uct.ac.za ( memento from January 20, 2015 in the web archive archive.today ), accessed on January 23, 2015
  6. ↑ Article at africultures.com (French), accessed on January 23, 2015
  7. ↑ Information at art.co.za , accessed on January 23, 2015
  8. ↑ a b List of awards at gerardsekotofoundation.com (English), accessed on January 22, 2015
  9. ↑ Portrait at johansborman.co.za (English), accessed on January 25, 2015
  10. ↑ Selection of drawings at art.co.za (English), accessed on January 23, 2015
  11. ^ South African Postage Stamps 1996 , accessed January 23, 2015
  12. ^ Sounds of Sekoto. Mail & Guardian, February 27, 2004, accessed January 25, 2015
  13. ↑ Description at bonhams.com (English), accessed on January 23, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Sekoto, Gerard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sekoto, Jan Gerard (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION South African painter and musician
DATE OF BIRTH December 9, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Botshabelo (Mpumalanga)
DATE OF DEATH March 20, 1993
Place of death Nogent-sur-Marne