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 from Robyn Nesbitt, Artist Proof Studio Curator, The Bus Factory, 3 President Street, West Entrance, Newtown Cultural Precinct, Newtown/ PO Box 664, Newtown, 2113, Gauteng, Johannesburg.

The Artist Proof Studio biography notes 'Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi was born in 1943 in Marapyane in the Hammanskraal area of the Northern Transvaal. She developed a life-long love for the designs of traditional arts and crafts when as a young girl she accompanied her grandmother who was a traditional wall and floor painter. Coming from a humble family with limited means to obtain a formal education, circumstances forced Mmakgabo to seek work as a domestic worker in JHB in 1959. In private and in her own time she pursued her nascent sense of creativity until her work was discovered by her employer, who encouraged her to paint.

Knowing that she needed formal painting lessons, she enrolled to study from 1970 to 1973 at the White Studio established by pioneering black painter, John Keonakeefe Mohl in Sophiatown. This training allowed her to broaden the scope of her work and eventually in the early 1980s she was able to exhibit her work at the JHB Artists under the Sun exhibitions in Joubert Park, enabling her to make a decent living from her art for the first time.

Having experienced the difficulty of pursuing art as a career, Mmakgabo was concerned with the development of art appreciation and art education. In 1985 she taught at the Katlehong Art Centre near Germiston, and in 1986 she took up a position at the JHB Art Foundation while also teaching at the Alexandra Art Centre. She also participated in numerous art projects with community organisations such as the Funda Art Centre and the Thupelo Art Workshop.

In 1988, she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to travel to the United States and worked at the Millay Centre for the Arts in New York. She exhibited at the Worldwide Economic Contemporary Artists’ Fund exhibition. In 1989, she won the Standard Bank Young Artist Award as well as the AA Vita Award, and soon became widely known in South Africa and internationally. Her work is routinely included in standard reference books on South African art. She has traveled and exhibited widely. In 2008, she was awarded the Order of the Baobab in Gold by the South African Presidency for her ‘excellent contribution in the field of visual and traditional arts and crafts’.

Mmakgabo began as a figurative painter working in oils until she began to experiment with abstraction and collage. She draws for her work on the happenings and experiences of daily township life. The suffering and disruption inflicted by apartheid, especially on women, are common themes, often executed with complementary techniques. She is best known for her pointillist paintings which often depict allegorical themes drawn from her experience of traditional communal rural life. Marion Arnold wrote of these paintings: ‘Things and people are literally torn asunder. Figures and animals surge across the picture plane, in a restless tangle of limbs and bodies – metaphors for overcrowded townships and conflicts between people and competing ideologies'. Taken from http://artistproofstudio.co.za/home/index.php/mmakgabo-helen-sebidi, Accessed 2014.8.24
Event Date 23/8/2014
Author: maa

Description (CMS Description)
Drypoint with monotype by Helen Sebidi titled 'Trying to catch it', 2005. Signed, dated and inscribed. Edition 2/5. Condition: Excellent
Event Date 23/8/2014
Author: maa