Gerard Sekoto (South African, 1913-1993) The donkey cart
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Notes : PROVENANCE:Acquired directly from the artist by Dr. Paul Davis's motherBequeathed to Dr. Paul DavisA private collectionThe Donkey Cart is a wonderful example of the mature Sekoto and the golden period of his career (1945–1947). Sekoto had reached the height of his artistic powers and, having travelled from Sophiatown to the Cape Province, he had returned to join his mother and his family in Eastwood, Pretoria. Like Sophiatown, Eastwood would also later meet its fate, the homes there being expropriated and demolished and its residents re-settled, but this tranquil country scene foretells none of the future tragedy.Sekoto had decided he would plan exhibitions to raise the necessary funds to travel to Europe, where he wanted to pursue his artistic career and discover new horizons. He wrote:"In 1945, I went to Pretoria where my mother was living and I continued to dream about Europe. I had understood that Paris was the 'Mecca' of the art world and that there was also freedom of thought there. I made up my mind to go ... But before leaving, however, I wanted to dig into my ancestral roots, as I no longer believed that the tradition of my forefathers was evil. On the contrary, I felt that I would find certain elements to complement my present living."His status as an artist had reached the point where he could not only approach, with confidence, his 'alma mater', the Gainsborough Galleries, but also find a new supporter in Christi's Art Gallery in Pretoria. Additionally, he applied for funding from the Bantu Welfare Trust, but that funding – £200 – only arrived two years later, when he had settled in Paris. It was the success of the local exhibitions that enabled Sekoto to leave South Africa for Paris in September 1947.Sekoto exhibited at Christi's in Pretoria in April 1947 and at the Gainsborough Galleries in Johannesburg in March 1946 and again in July 1947. It was at the Johannesburg exhibition in July 1947 that Sekoto's work attracted keen attention. It appears that The Donkey Cart was amongst the works shown, of which nine are known to have been sold. Press commentary was effusive and specific:"... showed Sekoto to have an instinct for pure, singing colour which his European contemporaries marvelled at ... He has now arrived at a stage in which form and drawing and tone have become important. In addition to the roundness and solidity of his figures, they are now beginning to live and move ... [as] in the driver and donkeys in no 32." (The Star, 23 July 1947)In the Rand Daily Mail on the same day, a similarly themed review appeared:"Chief interest in Sekoto's work has always been that peculiar gradation of tones reconciling primary colour with primary colour... There is a new firmness in his broad delineation of form and feature ... His street scenes and the donkey cart which features in two paintings are redolent of the atmosphere of the location and its society ..."The Donkey Cart depicts an everyday country scene typical of any rural area, even today. Sekoto's intuitive understanding of colour and how it affects mood is shown to complete advantage. The palette of soft pinks, blues, yellows and greens creates a gentle atmosphere, portraying the rusticity of a pleasant summer's day. Goats on the Hillside, Shorty and his Wife and Women in the Country, all of which were painted during this period, show a similar palette preference, implying that these kinds of bucolic scenes inspired this somewhat lyrical painterly approach.Here, The Donkey Cart fosters a sense of informality that produces an empathetic response in its viewers: the donkeys appear to be in conversation, debating the merits of whether or not they should respond to their master's whip. A somewhat muscular baby toddles towards what appears to be an oversized pram, and a woman crosses the road in the background. The surrounding trees and veld harmonise with the focal point of the man in his cart, whip aloft, and the donkeys, while the dark blue shadows of the trees and bushes behind concentrate all attention on the foreground action. Explaining the impulses behind this approach, Sekoto wrote, "What I wanted to catch was the life of the people and their expressions ... Landscapes would be rare. Mostly it was the movement that attracted me. I liked movement and the landscape would be in the background."The other painting depicting donkeys from the same period, Man in a Donkey Cart, is a more forceful rendition in which the branches of the trees alongside the road swirl with a hidden energy. The colour tones are, accordingly, more strident as the donkeys tread wearily along the road in the afternoon heat. Their lifted, forward-moving legs counter the movement of the swaying branches, recalling again the musicality of Sekoto's intrinsic thought processes.After Sekoto's exile to France, his painterly process became a series of themes that he would repeat many times, as though searching for something that he found difficulty in discovering. In the pre-exile subject matter of Horse and Cart, Sophiatown and Sekoto's two other compositions of the donkeys, the origin of this process – repeating subject matter in different ways – becomes evident. Later, in the '60s and '70s, the donkey as a focal point in Sekoto's oeuvre reappears.We are grateful to Barbara Lindop for her assistance in cataloguing this lot.
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