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George Pemba (1912-2001)


George Mnyalaza Milwa Pemba (South African 1912-2001) THE ARTIST'S MOTHER signed and dated 48 oil on canvas George Milwa Mnyalaza Pemba, South African National Gallery, Cape Town, 27.4.1996 - 28.7.1996, catalogue number 59 South African National Gallery and the Mayibuye Centre, University of the Western Cape, 1996, George Milwa Mnyalaza Pemba Retrospective Exhibition, SANG Publications, Cape Town, Illustrated on the back cover (cat. no, 59) Huddleston, S. 1996, Against All Odds, Jonathan Ball Publishers, Jeppestown, illustrated on page 106 49,5 by 37,5cm George Pemba was born in 1912 in Hill's Kraal, Korsten, Port Elizabeth. As a child he was encouraged by his father to draw and paint, and so began painting murals in the family house and producing portraits from photographs of his father's employers. In 1928, at 16, Pemba lost his father. In an effort to help support his mother and large extended family that had been under enormous financial strain since his father’s death, he was supplementing his income with painting commissions. He won a Grey Scholarship, which enabled him to receive post primary education, and in 1931 he obtained a Teacher's Diploma. That same year he began working for the Lovedale Printing Press, and continued to work there until 1936. The following year he studied under Professor Austin Winter Moore for five months at Rhodes University, made possible through a bursary awarded from the Bantu Welfare Trust. Pemba was awarded a second bursary in 1941. This time he spent two weeks at Maurice van Essche's studio in Cape Town attending art classes. Despite years of adversity and poverty, George Pemba’s painting career spanned six decades - providing a visual history of what he had witnessed in a transforming South Africa. He had established himself as a pioneer of social realism, taking his inspiration from the realities and struggles of urban black people’s everyday lives in a troubled South Africa. This painting is homage to Pemba’s mother – it depicts her as the matriarch....strong, fierce, reserved. Following the death of Pemba's father, in a motorcycle accident in 1928, Rebecca (Pemba's mother), struggled to support her children. She washed clothes at homes in the white suburbs, walking many miles (as far as 30km a day) to and from work. I.L. Edited from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Pemba [Accessed: 24 September 2015]
Description
Signed and dated 67 (lower left)

Technique
Gouache on cardboard

Date Created
1967

Dimensions
31 x 48 cm

Provenance
Estate of Ruth Swade

Condition
Good

Biography
Gerard Sekoto (1913 - 1993), was a South African artist and musician. He is recognised as the pioneer of urban black art and social realism. He has had exhibitions in Paris, Stockholm, Venice,Washington, Senegal as well as in South Africa. Sekoto was born on 9 December 1913 at the Lutheran Mission Station in Botshabelo near Middelburg, Eastern Transvaal (now known as Mpumalanga). As the son of a missionary, music was a part of his life, and he was introduced to the family harmonium at an early age. His art skills emerged in his teenage years, when he attended the Diocesan Teachers Training College in Pietersburg. This school, unlike most, featured drawing classes and other craftwork. Grace Dieu had a number of skilled woodcarvers producing sculptures on commission as well as for competitions such as the annual South African Academy exhibition. The sculptor Ernest Mancoba was a close friend of Sekoto's at Grace Dieu, and the two dreamed of going to Europe to attend art school. Sekoto, though, never fit within the paternalistic, prescribed sculpting style at Grace Dieu, preferring to paint and draw on his own.[2] On graduating as a teacher from the Diocesan Teachers Training College in Pietersburg he taught at a local school, Khaiso Secondary, for four years. During this time he entered an art competition (the May Esther Bedford) organised by the Fort Hare University, for which he was awarded second prize. George Pemba was awarded the first prize. In 1938 at the age of 25 he left for Johannesburg to pursue a career as an artist. He lived with relatives in Gerty Street, Sophiatown. He held his first solo exhibition in 1939. In 1940 the Johannesburg Art Gallery purchased one of his pictures; it was to be the first picture painted by a black artist to enter a museum collection. In 1942 he moved to District Six in Cape Town where he lived with the Manuel family. In 1945 he moved to Eastwood, Pretoria. In 1947 he left South Africa to live in Paris under self-imposed exile. The first years in Paris were hard, and Sekoto was employed as a pianist purely by chance at l?Echelle de Jacob (Jacob?s ladder), a trendy nightclub that had reopened for business after World War II. Here he played jazz and sang ?Negro Spirituals?, popular French songs of the period and some Harry Belafonte. Music became the way that he could pay his living and art school expenses. Between 1956 and 1960, several of Sekoto?s compositions were published by Les Editions Musicales. Sekoto played piano and sang on several records. He composed 29 songs, mostly excessively poignant, recalling the loneliness of exile, yet displaying the inordinate courage of someone battling to survive in a foreign cultural environment. In 1966 he visited Senegal for a year. Sekoto's paintings became political in the 1970s due to apartheid in his home country. In 1989 the Johannesburg Art Gallery honoured him with a retrospective exhibition and the University of Witwatersrand with an honorary doctorate.[3] He died on 20 March 1993 at a retirement home outside Paris.
Pemba, George THE UNPUBLISHED LETTERS OF GEORGE PEMBA WRITTEN TO ANDREW REED 1979 TO 1998 Port Elizabeth: 1979-1998 A remarkable collection of 190 letters, filed in date order, in their original envelopes written by the well-known South African artist, George Pemba to his friend Andrew Reed, plus 2 others in facsimile. They are mostly one-page and two-page hand written letters. Through an initial interview with Pemba for Professor Tim Couzens of the University of the Witwatersrand, other visits followed and a friendship that would last for the next 20 years sprang up between Pemba and Reed. As Reed writes: We began corresponding by letter on everything under the sun, but being a journalist with an interest in history I tended to ask him lots of questions about his artistic career and his literary and art contemporaries, such as the writer SEK Mqhayi and artists Gerard Sekoto and JK Mohl, and his memories of notable personalities such as the writer Sol Plaatje and band leaders such as Peter Rezant and Wilson Silgee. George had attended a public address given by Plaatje in Port Elizabeth when he was 17 or 18 years old. George responded with candour to these questions in his inimitable, humorous way. You'll see what I mean when you read his letters! The letters have been in my possession all along and have not been used by any other researcher or in any publication. Sarah Hudleston refers to our association in her biography of Pemba, 'Against All Odds', on page 79. Pemba had also already formed an association with Andrew Reed, a research student from Rhodes University.... On Christmas Day 1983 he wrote (in his diary): 'Reed has a way of appearing out of the blue before striking up a friendship. I have worked with him for a few years now. We have made trips together as far as the Free State and Edendale (Pietermaritzburg) to paint portraits of people such as Mrs (Martha) Bokako of Thaba Nchu and Selby Msimang of Edendale'. A persistent theme in George's letters throughout the 1980s was his wish to record his life story. He asked me to consider writing his full biography but I had my hands full with my own university research work... but the project didn't get off the ground fully until he met Sarah Hudleston. Once I moved to Johannesburg I saw a lot less of George, much to my regret, and last visited him at his new home in Motherwell, outside Port Elizabeth, a few months before his death in 2001. By that time Pemba was very ill and had to be fed his meals. These unpublished and hitherto unknown letters provide an amazing commentary on Pemba's life. Reed has made a summary of the contents of letters where Pemba relates details of his meetings with interesting people. The letters would furnish useful material for any future research into Pemba's life. The following quote from Prof P A Duminy: George Milwa Mnyaluza Pemba is without doubt a great South African artist. What is perturbing, however, is that recognition of this man's talent has come so late in his life. There are cognoscenti who, from the very beginning of his career, acquired and appreciated his outstanding work, but it is only in the recent years of Pemba's life that full appreciation has come about. If South Africa had not been burdened by racial polarisation, Pemba would have undoubtedly escaped the designation of being a great black South African artist and, instead, would have enjoyed equal status with his white contemporaries. 'Pemba's beginnings as a painter occurred at a time and place not only highly unfavourable, but well nigh impossible, for a young black man to succeed as an artist. Against all odds, however, he kept the flame of his creative spirit burning for more than six decades. Sometimes the flame burnt low, but it was never extinguished. For Pemba, rural and township life has been his main source of inspiration. His work has that universal quality and timelessness that secured for his best work a place of pride in South African art. The balance and the harmonious arrangements of the elements in his compositions, together with the richness of his colours contribute to the gentleness, but at the same time to the vitality of his work. Honesty, integrity and sincerity are among the major characteristics of Pemba's work...' (Prof P A Duminy) with acknowledgements to Sarah Hudleston: 'Against All Odds' quoted from the dustjacket. (QTY) ILLUSTRATED

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