Gerard Sekoto – SAFFCA

Gerard Sekoto is widely recognized as the pioneer of black South African Art. The artist was born in Botshabelo, a German Lutheran Mission Station near Middelburg in the Transvaal, to Andreas Sekoto – a Priest and School Teacher, and his wife, Anne Sekoto (née Serote), in 1913. The year was marked by the introduction of the ‘Natives Land Act’ –the first of the segregation legislations to be passed by the Parliament of South Africa. The series of measures taken by the government to exploit, alienate and degrade non-white South Africans that followed the Land Act drove Gerard Sekoto, and many other artists, musicians academics and activists, into self-imposed exile. Sekoto left in 1947 for Paris where he stayed until his death in 1993…Click to continue reading

By Chloë Reid