Portrait Of A Woman ,1968
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Notes : Gerard Sekoto’s work was indelibly linked to his dissociated position as a self-imposed exile from his home country of South Africa. His long-term life in Paris was marked by periods of intense economic hardship, but afforded him what he was looking for when he left South Africa, which was a fulfilling creative life. An important interregnum came during a year-long sojourn in Senegal, where he was in the ambit of the legendary political leader, poet and influential theorist of negritude, Leopold Senghor. This delicate and regal watercolour and gouache portrait dates to the year after his return from Senegal, but reflects a certain idealisation in his figuration of this beautiful and noble woman, pictured in almost full profile, which tallies with what may have been his memories of what was at the time an African utopia. The portrait is a long way from the grittier social realist depictions of his South African youth.
James Sey
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