attributed to

GERARD SEKOTO

(South African, 1913-1993)

MAN WITH A GUITAR

Oil on Unstretched Canvas

28 x 24 Inches

Bearing signature at bottom, on turn of canvas, "G. Sekoto" and struck through

 

An atmospheric study of a man wearing a violet-brown suit jacket and waistcoat with yellow shirt and rust-colored tie, shown holding a guitar loosely in his lap and contrasted against a background of hanging ochre draperies.

 

Gerard Sekoto is considered to be one of the more important figures in the history of South African art.  In addition to a major retrospective at the Tate Gallery in London, England, which traveled to the Musee Galliera in Paris; Amsterdam, Netherlands; Brussels, Belgium, Canada, and Washington, D.C., his life and work have recently been the subjects of the biography, "A Black Man Called Sekoto", by the Director General of South Africa's Department of Education.

 

Born in 1913, in South Africa, Gerard Sekoto attended the Botshabelo Training Institute and later studied pedagogy at the Diocesan Training College near Pietersburg.  After some time spent teaching in South Africa, he left for Paris in 1947.  Although Sekoto achieved some recognition as an expatriate artist, he only achieved true fame towards the end of his life, with the ending of the apartheid era contributing to the growing domestic and international appreciation of his work.

 

Gerard Sekoto's paintings have been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions, including at the Tate Gallery in London ("Contemporary South African Paintings") 1949; the Galerie Elsie-Clausen in Paris, France, 1949; the First Festival of African Art in Senegal, 1966; the Gallerie Randers in Stockholm, Sweden, 1970; "South African Artists in Exile" in Washington, D.C., the South African National Gallery in Cape Town and the Johannesburg Art Gallery on several occasions.

 

The artist's work is held in numerous public and private collections worldwide, including in the permanent collections of the Johannesburg Art Gallery, the Pretoria Art Museum and the South African National Gallery among others.

 

(Biographical information courtesy of

Shapiro Auctions Llc)