Background
Gerard Sekoto was born on December 9, 1913 in Botshabelo, near Middelburg, Eastern Transvaal (present-day Mpumalanga). He was the son of Andreas Sekoto, a priest and school teacher, and Anne (Serote) Sekoto.
Gerard Sekoto was born on December 9, 1913 in Botshabelo, near Middelburg, Eastern Transvaal (present-day Mpumalanga). He was the son of Andreas Sekoto, a priest and school teacher, and Anne (Serote) Sekoto.
Sekoto began his teacher’s training at the Botshabelo Training Institute in 1928, where he discovered color pencils. In 1930, he attended the Grace Dieu Institute. There, he completed his Standard Six (Grade Eight) and went on to study to become a teacher at the Diocesan Training College near Pietersburg, graduating in 1934.
On 13 December 1989, Sekoto received an honorary doctorate from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits).
Sekoto acquired his first teaching post in the Primary department of the Khaiso Secondary School. At Khaiso, he started using watercolors and met Ernest Mancoba, Nimrod Ndebele and Louis Makenna, who became his closest friends and mentors.
In 1938, at the age of 25, he left for Johannesburg to pursue a career as an artist. Sekoto’s reputation began to grow in Johannesburg, following a group exhibition at the Gainsborough Gallery in 1939, where his work was included along with that of some of Brother Roger’s students. The same year marked the artist’s first inclusion in one of the annual exhibitions of the South African Art Academy. He participated in these exhibitions every year until he left for Paris in 1947.
In 1942, Sekoto moved to the outskirts of District Six in Cape Town, where Brother Roger organized for him to rent a room with the Manuel family, who lived opposite Roeland Street prison. He met with members of the "New Group" - contemporary South African artists, who worked and exhibited together, including Judith Gluckman and Alexis Preller, as well as Lippy Lipschitz, Gregoire Boonzaier, Louis Maurice, Solly Disner and Walter Battiss. During this time, his work was exhibited in a number of galleries in Cape Town, namely the Argus Gallery, with the New Group and at the Jerome Gallery, where he and Louis Maurice held a joint exhibition in 1944.
When Sekoto moved to Paris in 1947, the artist lived in a tiny apartment and played the piano in various bars. Sekoto played jazz and sang "Negro spirituals", popular French songs of the period.
Although he achieved critical acclaim early on in Paris, from two solo exhibitions and a variety of group shows held at prestigious galleries, he struggled to sell many of his works. Famously, his painting, "Sixpence-a-door" was singled out and admired by the Queen Mother at the opening of The Overseas Exhibition of South African Art at the Tate Gallery in 1948. The exhibition traveled from London to Belgium, France, Canada, United States and to the Netherlands between 1948 and 1950.
In 1957, Gerard contributed an article titled "A South African Artist" to the July/September issue of the literary and cultural journal "Présence Africaine". Two years later, in 1959, th artist was invited to attend and address the Second Conference of Negro Writers and Artists, organized by Présence Africaine in Rome, where he spoke on "Responsibility and Solidarity in African Culture".
In 1966, he was invited by Leopold Senghor, a President of Senegal and famed African poet, to travel to Senegal and exhibit at the "First Festival of Negro Arts". Sekoto traveled together with his friend Tiberio Wilson. They stayed and worked in Dakar and the more remote village of Casamance until 1967, when they came back to Paris. In the next few years after his return, he held solo exhibitions in the Galérie Christine Colin, Galérie Marthe Nochy and the Galérie du Marais in Paris and participated in group exhibitions in various cities in Europe.
In 1983, he moved to Corbeil just outside of Paris. In 1989, the Johannesburg Art Gallery organized a large exhibition of his work, titled "Gerard Sekoto: Unsevered Ties".
Horse and Cart. Sophiatown
Women in the country
Four figures at a table
Mrs. M. D. Sekoto the artist
Three men at the railway station
Dancing Senegalese Figures
Vermeulen Street, Pretoria
Boy and the Candle
Family with candle
Beyond the gate
The Jazz Band
The Song of the Pick
Market at Western Native Township
Husband and wife
Washerwomen
Portrait of Manuels Cousin
Bernard the Artists Brother Asleep
Watching the dancer, Eastwood
Police Man on a White Horse in the Fields
The visitor Eastwood
A portrait of a cape coloured school teacher, Omar
Interior Sophiatown
Three Men Walking
Yellow houses, a street in Sophiatown
The waiting room, mother with baby
Figures in a shebeen
The Wine Drinker
Going home
Street scene
Cyclists in Sophiatown
Indaba
Prayer in Church
Women working outside a house
Looking down the hill, Sophiatown
Women with downcast eyes
Street musician
Self-portrait
Guga Mzimba
Girl with orange
Boys Around a brazier, Eastwood
Three women on steps
Blue head
Children Playing
The blue beret, Mary Sekoto
Outside the Shop
Women and child, Eastwood, Pretoria
Saint-Germain nightclub
Woman sewing (Mary Dikgiledi)
Woman
Two friends
The jazz band
Street Bonhomie - District Six
The artist’s mother and stepfather
The cyclist
Mary Dikeledi Sekoto
Family with candle
Head of a woman
The Proud Father, Manakedi Naky on Bernard Sekoto's Knee
Yellow Houses: District Six
Convicys cutting a hedge
The Shebeen, Sophiatown
The Donkey Cart, Eastwood
Paris street scene
Labourers in Sophiatown
Blue head
Village gossip
Soko Majoka (Sixpence a Door)
The Song of the Pick
View along the Seine, Paris
The Soccer Players
Woman with baby
Under the umbrella
Mine boy
The evening prayer
Woman crossing the road