Artist
William Kentridge
South Africa · 1955–
William Kentridge makes films from charcoal drawings he draws, erases and redraws, the Drawings for Projection, and operas and sculpture about South Africa.
South African sculptors
55 artists
South African sculpture has long been bound up with power and memory. In the first half of the twentieth century, sculptors such as Anton van Wouw and Coert Steynberg made the bronze presidents, generals and pioneers that filled the country's squares and monuments, many of them celebrating the Afrikaner story that apartheid was built on. Ernest Mancoba's carved wooden figures of the 1920s and 1930s, and the work of artists trained at centres such as Polly Street and Rorke's Drift, offered another tradition.
From the 1980s sculpture became one of the strongest voices of resistance and reckoning. Jane Alexander's Butcher Boys (1985–86), three seated figures with animal heads, remains one of the most disturbing images of the apartheid era. Since 1994, artists such as Mary Sibande, with her life-size figures of a domestic worker named Sophie, and Nandipha Mntambo, who works with cowhide, have brought new subjects to the medium. These are the country's sculptors, most looked-up first. See also South African artists and African sculpture.
Profiles
Painter
Marlene Dumas
South Africa · 1953–
Marlene Dumas, born in Cape Town and in Amsterdam since 1976, paints faces and bodies from photographs in loose, wet washes. A leading painter of our time.
Painter and sculptor
Dumile Feni
South Africa · 1942–1991
Dumile Feni, the "Goya of the townships", drew apartheid's suffering in powerful, distorted figures, above all African Guernica (1967), before exile in 1968.
Sculptor
Coert Steynberg
South Africa · 1905–1982
Coert Steynberg made the Paul Kruger statue at the Kruger Gate, the Bartolomeu Dias at South Africa House and the Krugerrand springbok: Afrikaner monuments.
More artists
Most looked-up first. Names link to our profile, or to Wikipedia where we do not have one yet. Short descriptions from Wikidata; portraits from Wikimedia Commons. Image credits
- John Latham · 1921–2006
Rhodesian-British visual artist
- Mary Sibande · 1982–
South African artist
- Jane Alexander · 1959–
South African artist
- Ernest Mancoba · 1904–2002
South African artist
- Willie Bester · 1956–
South African artist
- Brett Murray · 1961–
South African sculptor
Nandipha Mntambo · 1982–South African artist who has become famous for her sculptures, videos and photographs
- Gys de Villiers · 1960–
South African actor and sculptor
Paul du Toit · 1965–2014South African painter
Michael Gitlin · 1943–Israeli artist
- Lionel Smit · 1982–
South African artist
Ângela Ferreira · 1958–plastic artist of Portuguese origin
Edoardo Villa · 1915–2011South African sculptor
- Lippy Lipshitz · 1903–1980
Sculptor and painter
- Pitika Ntuli · 1942–
sculptor, poet, writer, and academic
- Jack Penn · 1909–1996
South African Reconstructive Surgeon and Artist
- Isaac Witkin · 1936–2006
British sculptor
Fanie Eloff · 1885–1947South African sculptor
- Evan Penny · 1953–
Canadian artist
- Lisa Swerling · 1972–
South African/ British artist and author
Ezrom Legae · 1938–1999South African sculptor
- Strijdom van der Merwe · 1961–
South African artist
- Cecil Michaelis · 1913–1997
South African painter
- Deborah Bell · 1957–
South African artist
- Andries Botha · 1952–
South African sculptor and photographer
- Wim Botha · 1974–
South African sculptor
- Buhlebezwe Siwani · 1987–
South African multidisciplinary artist
- Lucas Sithole · 1931–1994
South African sculptor
- Moses Kottler · 1896–1977
South African artist
Karlien de Villiers · 1975–South African artist
- Carl Walter Meyer · 1965–2017
South African artist
- Jackson Hlungwani · 1923–2010
South African sculptor
- Beth Diane Armstrong · 1985–
South African sculptor
- Jeremy Wafer · 1953–
South African sculptor
- Claudette Schreuders · 1973–
South African artist
- Frida Blumenberg · 1935–
South African artist
- James Webb · 1975–
South African artist
- Mary Stainbank · 1899–1996
South African sculptor artist
- Lungiswa Gqunta · 1990–
South African sculptor and visual artist
Zelda Nolte · 1929–2003South African British sculptor and woodblock printmaker
- Michael Bolus · 1934–2013
British sculptor
- Sarah Richards · 1968–
South African sculptor
- Naomi Jacobson · 1925–2016
South African sculptor
Anja Marais · 1974–South African sculptor and multi-disciplinary artist
- Johan Oldert · 1912–1984
South African painter and sculptor
- Herman Wald · 1906–1970
South African sculptor
- Bruce Arnott · 1938–2018
South African sculptor and educator
Janko de Beer · 1980–South African artist
- Johan Thom · 1976–
South African artist
- Sean Slemon · 1978–
South African sculptor
Berrell Jensen · 1933–2015South African sculptor