Welcome Koboka: Cutting firewood - SOLD
Welcome Koboka
Cutting firewood - 1975
Acrylic on board
45,5 x 61 cm
Signed and dated bottom right
Sold - 2009
Born Welcome Mandla Koboka, 1941 in Johannesburg
Died 1997 in Johannesburg
Welcome Koboka never achieved great commercial success, but deserves recognition as one of the pioneering painters in South African post-war abstraction.
An exponent of the Polly Street Art Centre, where he attended classes during the 1950’s, Koboka was a friend and colleague of the much more successful Ephraim Ngatane, whose stylistic influence is evident in his work. Koboka developed a distinct personal style and painterly language with which he documented daily life in the city of Johannesburg, its townships and the countryside surrounding it.
Koboka’s style, which was based on the abstracted simplification of forms, shows remarkable consistency throughout his oeuvre. A distinguishing characteristic of his acrylic paintings was his palette knife technique which produced a gritty surface with graphic qualities, whilst imbuing his figures with a weighted monumentality.
Bibliography:
Elza Miles, Polly Street: The Story of an Art Centre, Johannesburg, 2004, pp 126 and 130
To view the Welcome Koboka web page click here