Gerard Sekoto (South African, 1913-1993) The Bicycle
Provenance : [Timeline chronologique]
1975-01-01 | Acquired in Johannesburg, 1975; Thence by direct descent to the current owner; A private collection, France
[Propriété non datée]
- The bicycle recurs as a dominant motif in Gerard Sekoto's oeuvre
- It appears in the artist's early depictions of daily life in District Six (Cape Town), Eastwood (Pretoria), and the suburbs of Johannesburg (as in his masterly painting Three figures with bicycle
- Sophiatown ( circa 1940-42) offered in the present sale)
- Sekoto returned to the theme years later during his self-imposed exile in Paris
- Despite the artist's geographical distance from his native country, Sekoto asserted the enduring significance of his experience as a young man living in South Africa: '[a]ll that I do, even outside of South Africa, is still with the eye, the heart and the soul of the lands of my birth' (Sekoto quoted in Lindop, 1988: p. 242)
- In the 1970s, he drew upon these early memories in a body of work that illustrated painted scenes of everyday life in the townships
- As evidenced in The Bicycle, the figure of the cyclist persists in these works but is depicted in Sekoto's later style which embraces a softer colour palette and a more lyrical handling of form than employed in his paintings from the 1940s
- While the artist recognised the evolution of his practice across the decades, he also identified a continuity in his approach to painting these scenes of daily life in South Africa
- He noted that works from 'both periods still retain the endeavour to express the movement [within the scenes] and the desire to search into the innermost feelings of my subjects' (Sekoto quoted in Lindop, 1988: p. 284)
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