Ezrom Legae: Head of a wise man - SOLD
Ezrom Legae
Head of a wise man
ca. 1967
Bronze
Height: 32 cm
Signed with intial
Sold - 2009
Born Ezrom Kgobokanyo Sebata Legae, 1 June 1937 in Vrededorp, Johannesburg
Died January 1999 at the age of 61, Soweto
Ezrom Legae studied under Cecil Skotnes and Sydney Kumalo at the Polly Street Art Centre from 1959 to 1964. The training Legae received from Kumalo, and the stylistic influences gleaned from fellow students at Polly Street, such as Ben Arnold, Ephraim Ngatane, and Louis Maqhubela, resulted in his fusion of classical African and modernistic styles. Working in a neo-African idiom, as Elza Miles terms it, he applied these influences in his sculpture, to shape and interpret observations from life.
As with Skotnes and Kumalo, the African art collector and gallerist, Egon Guenther, had a seminal influence on Legae’s stylistic development and career. Guenther introduced these artists to German Expressionism and the sculptural traditions of West, and Central Africa, and familiarised them with the work of artists like Baumeister, Barlach, Kollwitz and Sharf. Elza Miles writes: According to Guenther, Legae, being exceptionally intense and sensitive, absorbed the spirit of the African pieces without copying them.
Describing Legae’s ‘Head of a wise man’, Miles comments: The artist uses the interplay of planes and shapes to create shadows cast by the eyes, cheeks nose and mouth. These create an impression of introspection which is associated with wisdom and meditation.
Bibliography:
Elza Miles, Polly Street: The Story of an Art Centre, Johannesburg, 2004, pp 47, 48, 90 and 134
Steven Sack, The Neglected Tradition: Towards a New History of South African Art (1930-1988), Johannesburg, 1988, p 108