Legae, Ezrom

Ezrom Legae is best known for his powerful visual commentaries on the pathos and degradation of apartheid - a critique he extended to the persistence of poverty and racism in the post-apartheid years. He 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.

Biography