Like many painters working far from the center in the post-World War II era of 1946, black artist Gerard Sekoto dreamed of going to Paris. “I had understood that Paris was the Mecca of the art world,” he told cultural activist Lorna de Smidt in a 1981 interview. “I needed to throw myself into the artistic fountain of Paris, which attracts so many nationalities throughout the world.”
By 1947, the year that he left for Paris, the then thirty-three-year-old Sekoto was recognized as one of the country’s leading artists, and his departure was financed by two successful solo exhibitions in a Pretoria gallery, both of which had sold very well. Also that year, four of his paintings were included in a show at the Tate in London and were singled out for praise by the British critics.
The subject of his paintings in oil and gouache and his keenly observed mixed media drawings was his daily life, as he moved from Sophiatown, Johannesburg, to District Six, Cape Town, and then Eastwood, Pretoria. Portraits, domestic interiors, street life, prisoners in a chain gang all found their place in his work. One of Sekoto’s best-known works is The Song of the Pick (1946), sourced partially from a photograph of black day laborers, singing in harmony as they worked, breaking the ground in perfect time to their song to leaven the backbreaking task of digging trenches. In the background of Sekoto’s painting is the thin-legged white overseer, his static pose a sharp contrast to the lithe energy of the powerful workers.
Once in Paris, Sekoto began to work on establishing a new life for himself as an international artist, painting scenes in the cafés and streets of Paris, but his ties to his homeland remained. In 1960, when the massacre at Sharpeville, near Johannesburg, made world headlines, Sekoto was deeply affected by the news.
The killings occurred when the Pan-African Congress organized what was intended to be a peaceful march to protest against black people being forced by the law to carry a passbook, or identification document, at all times. On March 16, 1960, more than five thousand black marchers approached the police station at Sharpeville with the plan of offering themselves up for arrest for not carrying a passbook.
Three hours into the protest, the police opened fire, continuing to shoot as the crowd fled. When the firing stopped, 69 lay dead and 189 were injured. Sekoto memorialized the tragic event with a series of vividly imagined gouaches of the clashes between police and protesters.
Even though the shocking event received worldwide publicity, in the subdued sixties in South Africa, little artistic attention was paid to the massacre. That task was taken on by artist in exile Sekoto.
Song of the Pick 1946
Oil on canvas/board
49 x 59.5 cm
Image courtesy of the BHP Billiton Art Collection and the Gerard Sekoto Foundation
© The Gerard Sekoto Foundation
Untitled (Violent scenes in a township)
Undated (c. 1960)
Gouache on card
33 x 24 cm
Image courtesy of Iziko South African National Gallery and the Gerard Sekoto Foundation Collection: Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town
Photographer: Michael Hall
© The Gerard Sekoto Foundation