Contemporary Art of South Africa

Walter Whall Battiss 

 

Walter Whall Battiss (6 January 1906 – 20 August 1982) was a South African artist, who is generally considered to be the foremost South African abstract painter and known as the creator of the quirky "Fook Island" concept.
Born into English Methodist family in the Karoo town of Somerset East, Battiss first became interested in archaeology and tribal art as a young boy after moving to Koffiefontein in 1917. In 1919 the Battiss family settled in Fauresmith where he completed his education, matriculating in 1923. In 1924 he became a clerk in the Magistrates Court in Rustenburg. His formal art studies started in 1929 at the Witwatersrand Technical College (drawing and painting), followed by the Johannesburg Training College (a Teacher’s Diploma) and etching lessons. Battiss continued his studies while working as a magistrate’s clerk, and finally obtained his Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts at University of South Africa at the age of 35.Wikipedia 

 

Christo Coetzee

Christo Coetzee (24 March 1929 – 12 November 2000) was a South African assemblage and Neo-Baroque artist closely associated with the avant-garde art movements of Europe and Japan during the 1950s and 1960s. Under the influence of art theorist Michel Tapié, art dealer Rodolphe Stadler and art collector and photographer Anthony Denney, as well as the Gutai group of Japan, he developed his oeuvre alongside those of artists strongly influenced by Tapié's Un Art Autre (1952), such as Georges Mathieu, Alfred Wols, Jean Dubuffet, Jean Fautrier, Hans Hartung, Pierre Soulages, Antoni Tàpies and Lucio Fontana.Wikipedia

Robert Hodgins 

  

Robert Hodgins (27 June 1920 - 15 March 2010) was a British-born South African artist, best known for paintings and printmaking. He was born in Dulwich, London, on 27 June 1920, and immigrated to South Africa in 1938. He enlisted with the Union Defence Force in 1940, and served in Kenya and Egypt.
In 1944 he returned to England, and studied art and education at Goldsmiths College, University of London, where he received an arts and crafts certificate in 1951 and a National Diploma of Design in painting in 1953.He returned to South Africa, where he taught at the Pretoria Technical College School of Art from 1954. From 1962 he was a journalist and critic for Newscheck magazine. He lectured in painting at the Univer..(ask art )

 

Fikile Magadlela

 

Fikile Patrick Magadlela (or Magadledla) was born 13 December 1952 in Newclare, Johannesburg South Africa. He started drawing on his parents’ walls from as early as he could remember. Reading books his father bought and getting knowledge from older people. He dropped out of High school in standard 8 (10th grade) to work as a full-time artist. Magadlela was relatively self-taught but he spent many hours with fellow artists exchanging ideas and techniques.Magadlela worked closely with artists such as Ezrom Legae, Solly Maphiri, Winston Saoli, Percy Sedumedi, Pietro Cuzzolini and Harold Jeppe who became his mentor, introducing him to art circles in Johannesburg.His most renowned work was entitled “Birth of The Second Creation” a series of drafted, mystical landscapes showing an African man and woman in flowing drapery and overwhelming clouds.Later Magadlela would do bolder landscapes with similar characters using more colour and poetry. His first exhibition first solo exhibition was at the Goodman Gallery then owned by Linda Givon in 1978.Magadlela died in 2003.Wikipedia

Frans Claerhout

 

Frans Claerhout (15 February 1919 – 4 July 2006) was a Belgian painter who spent most of his adult life in South Africa.Frans Claerhout was born in Pittem, West Flanders in 1919, and moved to South Africa as a missionary for the Catholic Church in 1946. he moved to South Africa at age 27. He stayed on a farm near Bloemfontein in the Free State province of South Africa. He worked as a priest and in his spare time he concentrated on his art.He started painting more after relocating to Thaba Nchu in 1960, and became famous for his unique style, which used vivid colors and incorporated items such as donkeys, sunflowers and figures of people he met through his everyday life. Claerhout died of pneumonia at age 87 in 2006.Examples of his work, characterised by their warm colours, thick impasto paint, exaggerated forms, humour and compassion were exhibited widely in South Africa, as well as in Belgium, Canada, Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom.Wikipedia