Gerard Sekoto: Family with candle - SOLD

Gerard Sekoto
Family with candle
Oil on canvas
61 x 51 cm
Signed bottom right
Sold - 2009

Born 9 December 1913 at Botshabelo, Middelburg, Mpumalanga
Died 20 March 1993 at the age of 80 in Paris, France

The series of highly atmospheric candle-lit paintings produced by Sekoto in the 1940 - 1942 period are proof of his extraordinary natural talent and intuitive ability to capture the dignity of his subjects and convey it with great empathy. Barbara Lindop comments on the humanity of his pre-exile paintings in terms of
‘his lack of sentimentality, his commitment to truth,
a poignant realism and an acute awareness of
the heroism revealed in ordinary human life.

Although Ernest Mancoba showed Sekoto copies of Van Gogh’s paintings and also used Van Gogh’s troubled life as an example of the struggle artists most often have to endure, Sekoto was always adamant about the fact that he had not allowed any other artist’s work to influence him in any aspect of his painting. The resemblance to Van Gogh’s ‘Potato Eaters’ is uncanny in Sekoto’s series of paintings dealing with the intimate night time gathering of friends or family members around a lone candle, usually the singular light source in a back-lit composition. What is remarkable about these seminal works is Sekoto’s ability to recognise, and successfully communicate, the emotional and atmospheric qualities of these ordinary, everyday scenes at such an early stage of his career - literally within the first year that he had started painting in oils.

Newspaper reviews of his 1940’s exhibitions referred to the aspects of ‘African primitivism’ evident in his work - trying to explain his lack of formal training and the resultant distortions of human form and perspective in his paintings. This view excludes the possibility that Sekoto had purposely chosen to portray these scenes in this manner in an attempt to capture the poignantly earthy and unsophisticated humanity of his subjects - affording them the dignity and respect they were most often denied as members of the working class in a discriminatory society.

When we study ‘Family with candle’, some intriguing questions arise - causing it to hold our attention and capture our imagination. It appears that the father, the breadwinner of the household, has just arrived home and is being served his evening meal by the mother of the family. It is late in the evening, because the rest of the family have already had their supper and have joined merely to be of company to him - and probably also out of respect. The lone candle on the dining table is the only source of light, also providing the glow by which the young man reads a letter - or is he reciting his homework? The overall mood of dignity, respect and pride in their hard-fought struggle for survival is overwhelming - an impressive example of social realism and modernism.

The very strong, but simplified, structure of the composition - centred around and radiating out from the candle, supported by the limited palette of muted colours, successfully communicate the poignancy of the scene without sentimentality.

Provenance:
Bonhams, The South African Sale, 18 February 2009, pp 36 and 37, Lot 29

Bibliography:
Barbara Lindop, Sekoto – The Art of Gerard Sekoto, London, 1995, p 10
Lesley Spiro, Gerard Sekoto: Unsevered Ties, Johannesburg Art Gallery, 1989, pp 25 to 28
N Chabani Manganyi, Gerard Sekoto: ‘I am an African’, Johannesburg, 2004, p 35

To view the Gerard Sekoto web page click here
To view the Gerard Sekoto biography click here