'Imbongi' 94Cm (37In) High (Excluding Base)
Estimations(basse-haute) :
Provenance : [Timeline chronologique]
1987-01-01 | Purchased from the Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, by the current owner, June 1987
Notes : Sydney Kumalo enrolled at Polly Street Art Centre in 1953, where he assisted Cecil Skotnes from 1957 to 1964. Skotnes encouraged him to become a professional artist and arranged for Kumalo to work in Edoardo Villa's studio from 1958 to 1960, to receive professional guidance and to familiarise himself with the technical aspects of sculpting and bronze casting.
Kumalo started exhibiting his work with some of the leading commercial Johannesburg galleries in 1958, and had his first solo exhibition with the Egon Guenther Gallery in 1962. His career took off in the mid 1960s, with his regular participation in exhibitions abroad, including such prestige events such as the Venice and Sao Paulo Biennales. From 1969 he allied himself with Linda Givon, founder of the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg, where he exhibited regularly until his death in December 1988. Skotnes, Villa, Legae and other peers from the Polly Street era also exhibited at the Goodman Gallery, under Givon's drive to promote a contemporary South African art that focused on international artistic trends, rather than ethnicity. The more Western-inflected Seated Forms and Reclining Figures increasingly made way for figures of spirited African authority, warrior-like images which used ancient associations to contemporary effect in works like Imbongi and Patriarch (see lot 55), and his ties with the Goodman Gallery facilitated the dissemination of this influence.
Another work titled Imbongi was commissioned for the NAPAC Opera House in Durban: It is appropriate that the final large scale work completed by Sydney Kumalo before his death is a three-metre high bronze figure of a Zulu imbongi or praise singer...Installed in 1987, the sculpture is appropriate because it is a modern rendering in bronze of an important figure in the court of the traditional Zulu kings and chiefs, a contemporary work which incorporates both African and European traditions of sculpture. This praise singer reveals the sculptor's love and respect for his traditional music and apostrophe and noble heritage, but also his urban sensibilities and admiration of contemporary international image-making. That it was commissioned for a large provincial theatre in 1980s South Africa, from a black artist, is a testament to the talent, stature and historical significance of Kumalo (Nicol 1999).
The present lot is likely the only bronze from an edition of three to be cast by Goodman Gallery during the artist's lifetime, at least one other was cast posthumously.
We are grateful to Dr Gavin Watkins for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.
Bibliography
M. Nicol, 'Sydney Kumalo' in They Shaped our Century: The Most Influential South Africans of the Twentieth Century, (Cape Town, 1999), p.451.
E. Miles, Polly Street: The Story of an Art Centre, (Johannesburg, 2004).
S. Sack, The Neglected Tradition: Towards a New History of South African Art (1930-1988), (Johannesburg, 1988).
E.J. de Jager, Images of Man: Contemporary South African Black Art and Artists, (Alice, 1992).
