EZROM LEGAE (SOUTH AFRICA 1938-1999) TORSO
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Notes : Notes: Born in Vrededorp, and partly educated at the legendary Polly Street studio, Legae also became a part of the Amadlozi Group with mentors and peers at the time Cecil Skotnes and Edoardo Villa among others. He worked in a wide range of media, but is well remembered for his sculpture. His standing as an artist on his own terms, and not simply as an anti-apartheid protest artists working at a time when it was almost incumbent on artists to show their opposition to apartheid, is indicated by the tributes paid to him on his death. The last respects paid by legendary retired gallerist Linda Givon, founder of the Goodman Gallery, are indicative: “Thirty years of working together through the heaviest time in a country shattered by the cruelest and most devastating destruction, a nation's deconstruction and reconstruction. You taught me how to look across the wall at the people who were so desperately subjected to unspeakable horror. Your sensitivity as a human being as well as an artist touched my heart and my soul. Your courage in a time when nobody dared to speak out in 1979 with your homage to Steve Biko and in 1980 with Freedom is Dead. Your sculpture of burnt flesh and necklaced people, tortured but always lyrical with a sense of poetry and deep sensitivity. It was fitting that you were chosen to present our great President Nelson Mandela with a bronze sculpture on his stepping down as head of the ANC. You have enriched my life and those of many others.” While a far cry from that vein of activism in his sculptural work, in this fine piece, Legae has produced a figure study which, while abstracted, speaks typically to both Western and African art-making styles. The implicit energy and elongation of this torso creates a pleasing dynamism and elegance. Edward Tsumele
Condition_report : The overall condition is good.
