Context (CMS Context)
Presented by The Art Fund and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. An acquisition project to build a collection of modern and contemporary work on paper from Australia, Canada and South Africa was undertaken over 2011-13 with the support of a grant under The Art Fund's RENEW programme. The collection was developed with the expert advice and generous assistance of Annie Coombes and Norman Vorano in relation to South African and Inuit artists respectively. Khadija Carroll, Anita Herle and Diana Wood Conroy also contributed to the selection process. Obtained as part of a larger group of prints 2013.221- 263 from Caversham Press.

The Caversham Press was founded in 1985 in the Caversham Valley of KwaZulu-Natal to afford South African artists access to a professional collaborative printmaking studio for the production of traditional limited edition prints. The Press was the first comprehensive facility of its kind in Southern Africa and has become highly regarded not only for the range of processes it offers and the expertise of founder and print-master, Malcolm Christian, but also for its reputation as an accessible and collaborative art centre.

Albert Adams (1929-2006) was one of major figures of 20th century South African art; of Indian and 'Cape Coloured' descent he was excluded from art schools but encouraged by the great painter Irma Stern to apply to study in the United Kingdom; he secured a place at the Slade in 1953; though he returned to South Africa for a short period from 1960 his life and artistic career would be that of an exile. Yet his work was permanently motivated by the confusion and exclusion he experienced as a child in the suburbs of Cape Town. Among the inspirations behind his great paintings and prints are Francis Bacon and Goya, but the pain they exhibit is particular to his biography and the experience of estrangement from Apartheid South Africa.

This work is exemplary: for Adams spoke of the tightrope 'that an artist walks between the emotions which direct the creativity and the objectivity required in the development of the work' (obituary, Guardian, 5 January 2007).

Event Date 12/12/2013
Author: maa

Description (CMS Description)
Black and white serigraph print by Albert Adams, titled 'The Traveller,', 2001. Edition 9/30. Inscribed in pencil 'Albert Adams/ '01/ The Traveller', with '00889/09/30' on rear.
Event Date 12/12/2013
Author: maa