Gerard Bhengu: Portrait of a smiling Inyanga - SOLD
Gerard Bhengu (1910 - 1990)
Portrait of a smiling Inyanga
Watercolour
34,5 x 25,5 cm
Signed bottom left
Sold - 2012
Gerard Bhengu started his artistic career with a commission to paint studies of the various Zulu face markings from 1926 to 1931 for Dr Max Kohler’s anthropological research. These illustrations were published in Marriage Customs in Southern Natal (1933) and The Izangoma Diviners (1941). These examples of his work were done much later, by which stage the artist had moved beyond the anthropological aspect of portrait painting to capturing the personas of his fellow countrymen.