Gerard Sekoto

Private Collection, Paris

Acquired from the above by the present owner

In 1947 Sekoto left South Africa in exile for Paris, never to return. The following year, the National Party won the South African general election and began to implement their program of apartheid. "I think always of home happenings, and of course feel much concerned as a South African".

In Paris, Sekoto befriended Frenchman Raymond de Cardonne and his Danish wife Else Clausen, who spoke English and owned the Galerie Else-Clausen at 14 Rue Des Beaux-Arts in the 6th arrondissement. The couple offered Sekoto his first gallery exhibition in Paris, Peintures Sud-Africaines par Gérard Sekoto, 22-30 April 1949. The present lot was painted by the artist to advertise the show, which was "mainly attended by my personal relations together with a few of my friends". Used to the success he had enjoyed in South Africa before he left, Sekoto was devastated to only sell three paintings.

"Paris hadn't been easy. Sekoto couldn't afford a studio, painted instead in his small, airless hotel room, laying his canvases on the floor where a small square of light fell. Three weeks ago he began hearing accusing voices repeating 'You're no good, Gerard. Your painting is no good'. To escape the voices, he tried to drink poison, hang himself. Friends rescued him, sent him off to the asylum of St. Anne.

"At the asylum last week he was well enough to talk about getting back to his painting. He still had much to learn so that he could tell the world about his homeland. 'I am an African', said Sekoto, 'I would be stupid to want to become a European'." ('Art: Touring Africans' in Time Magazine, 8 Aug 1949)

Bibliography:

Barbara Lindop, The Art of Gerard Sekoto, (London, 1996)