Pientia Selhorst

Sr. Pientia Selhorst in the studio with Joseph Dlamini, 1970

Pientia Selhorst , CPS ; real name Josepha Anna Maria Selhorst , called Sefchen ; (* December 20, 1914 in Rietberg , Westphalia ; † June 11, 2001 Missieklooster Heilig Bloed Aarle-Rixtel in Beek en Donk , Province of North Brabant , Netherlands) was a German Mariannhiller Missionary Sister of the Precious Blood (CPS - congregatio pretiosi sanguinis ) as well as artist and Art educator. She worked in South Africa and was considered "one of South Africa's leading religious artists". Her religious name was Sr. Maria Pientia, Sr. M. Pientia Selhorst or Sister Mary Pientia .

Life

Selhorst was the eldest daughter of the cabinet maker and head of a workshop for Christian art, Hermann Selhorst (* 1877 on the Selhorst farm in the Selhorst district near Langenberg / Westphalia , now the Gütersloh district; † 1931 in Nordhagen / Westphalia ) and sister of the art historian Stephan Selhorst . From 1931 to 1933 she attended the Neuenbeken convent school near Paderborn, where she graduated from high school and became a member of the Mariannhiller Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blood (CPS) in the mission house of the Neuenbeken Provincial Council. During her profession on July 1, 1937, she was given the name Sr. Maria Pientia, nickname and signature Pin , with the profession saying Eph 3:19 “You shall recognize the love of Christ which transcends all knowledge” .

After attending the drawing school in the mother house of the order, Heilig-Blut in Aarle-Rixtel in the Dutch province of North Brabant in 1934/35 she was sent to Mariannhill / South Africa and reached Durban on June 8, 1938 in the last group of missionaries before the war began. She studied from 1941 to 1947 Senior Lecturer in Fine Art with the painter and professor Rosa Somerville Hope (born June 8, 1902 in Manchester , England; † May 7, 1972 in Kokstad , South Africa - see also article in the English Wikipedia) at the University of Natal in Pietermaritzburg with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree . With Miss Hope as her friend, she went on numerous study trips to Europe. In order to specialize in the design of glass windows in churches, she was able to receive further training in 1956/1957 at the Düsseldorf Art Academy under her sponsor, the professor of glass painting Georg Meistermann , who had just been appointed to Düsseldorf , in his class for monumental painting for church surfaces; In addition, she studied free graphics, especially lithography, with the deputy academy director Otto Coester. Through contact with her fellow student Gotthard Graubner , she turned to constructivism and the two-dimensionality of the surface. She worked as an art lecturer at St. Francis College of the Order in Mariannhill / Durban in the province of Natal (now Mariannhill Secondary Independent School ), which was taught by her younger sister, Maria (called Mia) Selhorst, religious name Sr. M. Dominica (1916– 1990), sent to South Africa in 1948, and also suggested changes to the liturgy based on African traditions. At college, for example, she worked with Benedict Wallet Vilakazi , who was the first black South African to receive his doctorate in 1946 with a thesis on the oral traditions of the Zulu and Xhosa. She celebrated her silver profession at the place of activity of the order Glen Avent Convent / Umtata, the golden one in the Missieklooster Heilig Bloed Aarle-Rixtel, North Brabant, because after home leave in 1967 and 1971, Sr. Pientia left Mariannhill in 1981 to stay in Europe permanently work and convey their art project.

plant

In her work as an art teacher, she opened a studio with art workshops for painting and mosaic. In doing so, she translated the leitmotif of the Second Vatican Council , the aggiornamento , as the opening of the Church to this world, especially in liturgy and outward appearance, into an artistic principle based on intrinsic motivation and fascination as a “mystical approach” (Selhorst, after Leeb-du Toit) of enculturation ("a form of 'acculturated primitivism'", Leeb-du Toit). This meant promoting the art of blacks in their various tribes in the context of the colorful multi-ethnic state of South Africa (“cross-cultural imperatives of inculturation”, Macdonald; “mysterious and elusive Africanness”, Macdonald). The aim was to develop Christian art and symbolism that, on the basis of the importance of African masks for modern art, especially Picasso, honors the "primitive" as an abstraction and inspiration of Cubism ("Negro art", "Picasso Primitif") , Exposition 2017) and further developed (“a more syncretic, authentically 'African' expression of Christianity”, “Zulu Christian iconography”, Leeb-du Toit).

In her own artistic work, especially her portraits in chalk or in oil with black contours, she accentuated negroid facial features in European faces and parallel to this in the faces of blacks a hermaphroditic beauty, which the European viewer also seizes as an aesthetic. For this she used the linocut as a medium , through which the contours emerge white on a black background, so that the black-and-white contrast appears as a simile of both variability and equality, like in a picture puzzle. In the South African environment shaped by apartheid , but also in the structures of the community of European missionaries and in view of the unquestioned import of conventional church art, in which Christ was always portrayed as white, this was a challenge. Sr. Pientia's appreciation of a genuinely African theology and her book project under the title of the Zulu's name of God, “Unkulunkulu”, can be placed in the context of the reformist approach of the religious philosopher of Africa, John Samuel Mbiti. She also stood up against the iconoclasm (Mcdonald) of the older generation of missionaries who fought against "primitive" and "pagan" African art.

The church building was changed into a round building in favor of the traditional kraal architecture in southern Africa : This generates a “space” for forms of communal life, creates a protected framework for a democratic and dialogical exchange, it is also a symbol of the method of the Bible - Partly as an integration of laypeople and an architectural vision in the direction of a participatory base community (exemplary the floor plan of the Church of the Holy Cross, McKay's Nek Transkei). Here the concern that God is with and in the midst of people becomes visible - in the sense of the Lumko Institute in Johannesburg, founded in 1962 by the South African Bishops' Conference, under the motto: "Leave the Church in the village". The design of the figures of Christ, Madonna, saints and angels as blacks as well as the “Africanised” stations of the cross express the solidarity with which the black population suffered on the path of suffering. Her style is described as "symbolic, impressive and colorful". She also took up wood printing techniques used by blacks and transformed profane and religious motifs into series, a frieze with meander patterns, an iteration and embedding of the environment in the sense of the Benedictine rule of the order Ora et labora . Here Selhorst's thesis of the complementarity “work art = work of art”, which it expands into the intercultural, from the “neglected tradition” of South African black artists to their integration into the world art history to be written (“a cross-cultural African sacred art was developed ”, Nieder, p. 96;“ the advancement of both secular and liturgical art ”, Leeb-du Toit, 2003, p. 95). Sr. Pientia's pictures are present in South African public buildings as well as in churches and mission houses and the works of her students.

The nun was also active in religious politics as a historical-hermeneutical researcher of the Benedictine-Cistercian missionary method. She was called by the General Administration of the Missionaries of Mariannhill (CMM) to their Generalate in Rome in 1972 to design this place in the spirit of the founder of the order, Abbot Franz Pfanners, but also to explain his reference to the order's founders Benedikt von Nursia and Bernhard von Clairvaux . According to the testimony of numerous missionaries, Sr. Pientia succeeded in this both on a spiritual level and in artistic expression. With this in mind, she also set up numerous mission museums as documentation of the activities or designed the living and working spaces of the missionaries in their houses in an overall spiritual-artistic form (e.g. Generalate of the Mariannhiller in Rome, Riedegg Castle / Upper Austria , Reimlingen / Bavaria, Würzburg [missionaries from Mariannhill. German province]; founder of the mission museum in the motherhouse Menzingen [sisters of the Holy Cross], canton Zug, Switzerland).

student

In 1960 Selhorst founded an art center "Lumko Art Center / Lumko School" in Queenstown ("African Art Center", Kwa Zulu-Natal). "Lumko" means "wisdom" in the language of the Xhosa. The school pursued two goals: “the proclamation of the good news in African garb” and “the local color in the construction and decoration” of all public, including of course sacred spaces, both “fruit and expression of the local art school, whose soul the talented Sr. Pientia ”was. Her most famous students include:

• Duke (Ellington Sipho) Ketye (born June 6, 1943 Orlando, Soweto; † July 13, 2002, ibid.), Since 1960 at the Lumko Art Center, art teacher at St. Francis College Mariannhill 1976–1978, scholarships and exhibitions in the USA and UK; his wood sculptures and reliefs, e.g. B. to the four seasons, adorn public buildings such as churches (1976 Church of Our Lady of the Assumption, Makwane, QwaQwa, province Foreistata , work motif "Dancers"), 1979 illustrations for a Zulu Bible
• Joseph Dlamini († 1970 Mariannhill), highly talented, early deceased wood carver of crosses with bodies, Madonnas and South African wild and domestic animals (e.g. jumping)
• Michael Mbebe (plants in the Netherlands)
• Rosina Qwalana
• Frans (Franz) Hodi (* 1937 Cathcart district; 1988 referred to as missing), who studied with P. Selhorst from 1960 to 1967 and developed Bantu art into the modern era and exhibited at the international Bantu Inter Faith Art Exhibition in Durban as early as 1965 . Characteristic are Hodi's representations of the liquid, both in everyday life (“washerwomen”) and in biblical iconography (“Infant Moses”).
• Michael Gagashe Zondi (1926–2008), an internationally known wood sculptor, is assigned to her school.
• The work of Dina Cormick (* 1942) represents a logical continuation of Sr. Pientia's aesthetic-spiritual artistic work , which with its miniaturized altar shrines ties in with the traditional feminine traditions of domestic, quasi “private religious” devotion to Christ, which are not controlled by men and priests .

In addition, Selhorst worked with the painter, graphic artist and wood carver Professor John Watt (Jack) Grossert (1913-1997), the Organizer of Arts and Crafts of the Division of Bantu Education in the Department of Native Affairs of Natal in Pietermaritzburg . Together they completed the commissioned work “Introducing Arts and Crafts as a subject in the Bantu Education curriculum” in 1959, the results of which are documented in the Killie Campbell Africana Museum Durban and the Campbell Collection .

Others

An article by Pientia Selhorst, Art and the Spreading of the Gospel , plays a role in the novel Aurora 7 (1991) by American author Thomas Mallon , which covers the lives of a number of people in 1962, while Scott Carpenter is simultaneously in his space capsule Aurora 7 orbits the earth.

Exhibitions

• Pietermaritzburg, University of Natal, The Department of Fine Arts (1948)
• Rome / Vatican in the exhibition "Art of the Missions / Exhibition of the Art of the Missionlands" on the occasion of the Holy Year (1950)
• Traveling exhibition "Unkulunkulu [supreme being in the Zulu religion, creator of all things and forefather, the great-great]" (1956) as a testimony to 'current African art', Raesfeld Castle with Dutch partners, under the direction of her older brother, the art historian and journalist Professor Stephan Selhorst (Werkkunstschule Münster)
• Rietberg (1956) under the direction of her older brother (see above)
• Heimatmuseum Münsterland Telgte, images of Mary from mission countries (1969)
• Cervo (Liguria) , Italy (1971) under the direction of her older brother (see above)
• VHS Arnsberg Neheim-Hüsten (May / June 1974), catalog layout and appreciation by the Catholic publicist Erich Kock (Cologne) under the title “The craft that one is born to” and the programmatic motto text by Fernand Léger , the opening speech held the Africanist and publicist Magdalena Padberg (Eslohe)
• VHS Reckenberg-Ems / Parish Center St. Johannes-Baptist Rietberg (May 9-17, 1981) under the direction of her younger brother, the home curator and rector Bernhard Selhorst (Rietberg)
• Mariannhill, centenary celebration of the monastery (1982)
• "Studio Mariannhill", cataloged in the absence of the artist and set up as a museum by John Watt ("Jack") Grossert (1991)
• "Studio Brabant" in the mission house / mother house Aarle-Rixtel, Netherlands (1993)
• “Studio Musenorth”, archive under construction, created by Maria Behre (Aachen), the daughter of Pientia Selhorst's youngest sister, Thea Behre

Works (selection)

• 1949 Old monk from Mariannhill
• 1949 European children
• 1949 Zulu girls from Mariannhill
• 1949 Indian Girls or Annunciation
• 1950 Martyr of Uganda , Vatican
• 1950 Poudo sorceress
• 1954 where are we going? , Paris, private collection
• 1956 masks , application for the Düsseldorf Art Academy
• 1959 Still life with vases , charcoal drawing
• 1964 love feast
• 1968 Bamboo Mountain Drakensberg (Oil on masonite, Coll: DAG 1968)
• 1968 Kimberley : Workers' housing for diamond seekers
• 1971 Adam leaves the Garden of Eden
• 1989 Way of the Cross , after F. Harmsen
• 1952 Garden of the Sisters' Convent Mariannhill
• 1952 St. Mary's Hospital Mariannhill
• 1954 Church of Christ the King , Zigudu, Transkei
• 1955 Chapel of the Mariannhill Sisters' Convent
• 1959 Cathedral of Christ the King , Queenstown, Eastern Cape (see explanatory brochure, Queenstown Printing and Publishing Company 1959)
• 1959 Church of the Holy Cross , McKay's Nek, Transkei
• 1959 St. Michael and All Saints Church , Catechetical Training Center, Lumko near Lady Frere, Transkei (together with Rosina Qwalana)
• 1960 Cathedral of the Sacred Heart , Bloemfontein
• 1964 New church building for the mission station in Embakwe , today Kwekwe ( Midlands Province ), South Rhodesia, today Zimbabwe , commissioned oil paintings by Father Adalbert Ludwig Balling
• 1976 portrait of her eldest brother Stephan Selhorst
• 1978 Sr. Pientia / P. Anton Loetscher: Way of the Cross for the elderly and the sick , Kanisius Verlag, Freiburg / Switzerland 1978, 3rd edition 1981, 5th edition 1985 ( ISBN 3-85764-055-3 )
• Altar cross in the church / sisters chapel of the Sacred Heart Home Ixopo / South Africa (before 1981)
• Cross in the Heritage Center of the Emaus Mission in the Skimpers Nek Mountains

literature

• Pientia Selhorst: Gentle Pearl - South Africa [about the training of Zulus as teachers at the Marianhiller University in the field of art], Frauenland. Journal for Catholic Women, Volume 39, 1956, Issue 11/12, pp. 176f. as well as 178 [linocuts for the "prodigal son", always also with mother]
• M. Adelgisa, CPS: Christian Art in the Land of the Tembu Negroes , World Mission. Pontifical Work for the Propagation of the Faith, Aachen, Volume 32, Issue 3: May - June 1959, pp. 3f
• Adalbert Ludwig Balling: In gratitude and joy , Engelsdorfer Verlag, Leipzig 2015, p. 251f. ISBN 978-3-95744-537-7 (on the establishment and justification of the above commissioned work in Embakwe)
• Adalbert Ludwig Balling: Humorous people live longer. Say yes to life with a smile. Cheeriness, quick-wittedness and serenity, Engelsdorfer Verlag , Leipzig 2017, p. 59 ISBN 978-3-96008-978-0 ( including: Anecdote In aller Humut )
• John Baur: Christ comes to Africa: 2000 years of Christianity on the black continent . Translation Brigitte Muth-Oelschner, Academic Press Friborg Suisse / Freiburg (Switzerland): Paulus Verlag / Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag 2006, p. 401
• Esmé Berman: Art & Artists of South Africa: An Illustrated Biographical Dictionary and Historical Survey of Painters, Sculptors & Graphic Artists Since 1875 , Cape Town: AA Balkema 2. ed. 1983 (1970), p. 418f.
• Barry Comber: Mariannhill's Shrine to a Controversial Nun. In Sister Mary Pientia Selhorst CPS's Mariannhill, Natal art studio everything lies today as it did when she left for Europe in 1980 for a series of mission art exhibition, Sunday Times Color Magazine, June 28, 1987 (category "Art and Religion")
• Dina Cormick: Bernard Gcwensa and Ruben Xulu. Christian artists of Natal . Pretoria: Academia 1993.
• Frieda Harmsen: The Way to Easter. Stations of the Cross in South Africa , Pretoria: Joan Lötter Publications 1989, ISBN 0-620-12831-3 (especially, pp. 5, 22f., 35, 51, 54f., 85f. With an art-theoretical concept in a letter to F. Harmsen dated June 4, 1985 and the list of all the ways of the cross designed by P. Selhorst between 1952 and 1960)
• Sandra Lynne Hayashida: Mission and the Visual Expression of the Gospel in the Sculpture of Jackson Hlungwani, for the degree of Master of Theology in the subject Missiology at the University of South Africa , 2000 ( pdf)
• Philippa Hobbs, Elizabeth Rankin: Printmaking: In a Transforming South Africa , David Phillips Publishers [David Krut Distribution] 1997.
• Philippa Hobbs, Elizabeth Rankin: Rorke's Drift: Empowering Prints , Capetown 2003, p. 230f.
• Juliette Leeb-du Toit: Verskeidenheid en wisselwerking (= SA Vereniging van Kunsthistorici 5de Jaarlikse Konferensie), Universiteit van Natal, Durban, 17-19. July 1989 = Diversity and interaction: SA Association of Art Historians 5th Annual Conference, University of Natal, Durban, 17–19 Jul 1989, pp. 81–89.
• Juliette Cécile Leeb-du Toit: Contextualizing the Use of Biblically Derived and Metaphysical Imagery in the Work of Black Artists from Kwazulu-Natal: c1930–2002 . Dissertation for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History of Art, in the School of Language Culture and Communication at the University of Natal Pietermaritzburg 2003 (especially the chapter "Mariannhill" pp. 92–129, comprehensive description of the work and impact of Sr. Pientias in the context of their fellow campaigners, critics and students with rich source material) digitized
• Rebecca Loder-Neuhold: Crocodiles, Masks and Madonnas. Catholic Mission Museums in German-Speaking Europe , Diss. Phil. at the Theological Faculty of Uppsala University, 2019 http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1363017/FULLTEXT01.pdf , pp. 145f. and p. 378f.
• James Macdonald: Tracing the Passion of a Black Christ. Critical reflections on the iconographic revision and symbolic redeployment of the Stations of the Cross and Passion cycle by South African artists Sydney Kumalo, Sokhaya Charles Nkosi and Azaria Mbatha. Dissertation for the degree of Master of Arts in Fine Art, Michaelis School of Fine Arts, University of Cape Town, July 2016 (especially pp. 2, 31, "Sister Mary Pientia") ( digitized version )
• Daniel Magaziner: The Art of Life in South Africa , Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press 2016.
• Reanda Mouton: A tribute to women who rocked the SA art boat , The Pretoria News, June 15, 1991.
• E. Miles, E. Rankin: The Role of the Missions in Art Education in South Africa . Africa Insight. 22 1992 (1), pp. 34-48.
• Kirsten Nieser: Michael Zondi. Creating Modernity , for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Art History), University of Kwazulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg 2010, p. 96 (pdf)
• John Oxley: Stained Glass in South Africa , William Waterman Publications; 1St Edition edition (1994), ISBN 1-874959-09-9 , 9781874959090, pp.73-77.
• Lize van Robbroeck: Race and Art in Apartheid Southafrica , Chapter Four, Visual Century, Vol. 2, p. 94 ( abstract )
• Lize van Robbroeck: Writing White on Black. Modernism as Discursive Paradigm in South Africa Writing on Modern Black Art. Dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University of Stellenbosch, 2006 Abstract
• P. Josef Ruitshauser: Man in the middle. Diary - Notes from Africa , Immensee (Switzerland): Missionsgesellschaft Bethelehem 1963.
• Steven Sack: The Neglected Tradition , Johannesburg: Johannesburg Art Gallery 1988 excerpt .
• Pientia Selhorst CPS: Memoirs of an Artist , in: MARIANNHILL '82. Order and shipment. On behalf of the Generalate of the Mariannhill Missionaries. Edited and published by Adalbert Ludwig Balling , Reimlingen - Würzburg, Mariannhill 1976, pp. 96–98 (on the book title: Franz Pfanner laid the foundation stone for the mission center in 1882, it is a future program for 1982).
• Stephan Selhorst: The mission of Christian art. Pioneering work of a religious woman in South Africa , in: Frauenland. Journal for Catholic Women : Organ of the Catholic German Women's Association, Cologne, Volume 39, 1956, Issue 9/10, pp. 132–134 (other works on p. 135, p. 138, 139)
• Yvonne Winters: Indigenous Aesthetics and Narratives in the Works of Black South African Artists in Local Art Museums. Dissertation for the degree of Master of Arts in History of Art, in the Faculty of Human and Management Sciences, University of KwaZulu, Natal, Pietermaritzburg, November 2009 full text .
• Mzuzile Mduduzi Xakaza: From Bhengu to Makhoba: Tradition and Modernity in the Work of Black Artists from KwaZulu-Natal in: the Campbell Smith Collection [after 2005] online .

Web links

• Biobibliographical entry in South African History
• Pientia Sister Selhorst - Worldcat Identities
• Geissler Archive: Portfolio number 200 s - Rhineland-Palatinate, State Library Center (PDF; 149 kB)
• Harmsen, Frieda: Smithsonian Libraries African Art Index Project DSI, 1993

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Year-end Review 2001 - The Southern Cross . In: The Southern Cross . December 31, 2001 ( scross.co.za [accessed April 15, 2017]).
2. ^ Café Münte: Memorial of the month February. In: die-glocke.de. January 9, 2013, accessed April 13, 2017 . 
3. ↑ Juliette Cécile Leeb-du Toit: CONTEXTUALIZING THE USE OF BIBLICALLY DERIVED AND METAPHYSICAL IMAGERY IN THE WORK OF BLACK ARTISTS FROM KWAZULU-NATAL: c1930–2002
4. ↑ Jacob K. Olupona, Sulayman S. Nyang (ed.): Religious Plurality in Africa: Essays in honor of John S. Mbiti . Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1998 (1993).
5. ↑ F. Harmsen, p. 3
6. ↑ Balling, 2015
7. ↑ P. Josef Rutishauser: Man in the middle. Diary - Notes from Africa . Mission Society Bethlehem, 1963, p. 182 .
8. ↑ Anonymous: Michael Gagashe Zondi. February 17, 2011, accessed April 15, 2017 . 
9. ↑ Moments of Awakening by Dina Cormick. Durban University of Technology , August 28, 2013, accessed on May 6, 2017 (in English, on the Moments of Awakening exhibition , August 2011). 
10. ^ Grossert, John Watt In: WorldCat Identities , accessed April 13, 2017.
11. ↑ Thomas Mallon: AURORA 7 . A harvest Book Harcourt Inc., San Diego, New York, London 1991, p. 80 f., 132-135 .
12. ↑ sahoboss: Josepha Selhorst . In: South African History Online . February 17, 2011 ( org.za [accessed December 1, 2017]).
13. ↑ Josepha (sister Mary Pientia) Selhorst Archives (1971) ( Memento of the original from July 19, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Stephan Welz & Co , accessed on April 13, 2017