Stanley Faraday Pinker

Background

Stanley Pinker was born on July 7, 1924 in Windhoek, Namibia.

Education

Stanley Pinker studied art under Maurice van Essche in Cape Town. Van Essche himself studied under Matisse, sketching an artistic lineage that connects Pinker directly to the vocabulary of European modernism, communicated with such assurance in his paintings.

Career

Pinker spent many years in Europe after his studies, absorbing the varied cultural stimuli it offered. Despite a brief visit to Cape Town in 1954 to hold his first exhibition, it was only in 1964 that he returned permanently to South Africa. Here the artist discovered an abiding sense of identification with the country, which he initially channelled into landscape painting. He soon began populating his landscapes, however, in an attempt to explore the socio-political complexities of his surroundings. Known for his incisive and allusive wit, Pinker would also continue to develop the distinctive spatial qualities for which his work is known.

In "The Garden of Eden", Pinker provided the viewer with a pared down, Cubist-inspired Adam and Eve who lock eyes sharply above an abundance of sensuous floral forms. At first glance, this appears an idyllic scene, but the reference to the Garden of Eden locates the viewer in an uncomfortable position of dramatic irony; the awareness of a loss which is both imminent and irretrievable. An ambience poised between darkness and light, innocence and knowledge, is invoked by the starkly contrasting background colors.

The subjects and objects recontextualised in this latter-day paradise become what curator of the South African National Gallery (which boasts several Pinkers in its collection), Hayden Proud, refers to as "the dramatis personae of his art. Populating the shallow stage of his format, they become suspended in a pictorial realm of studied whimsy, interlocking and fusing to become potent metaphors." In 1969, Pinker was appointed as a lecturer at the Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town, where he inspired several generations of young painters, including internationally acclaimed artists, such as Marlene Dumas. South African painter Stanley Pinker has died in Cape Town at the age of 87.

Achievements

• Pinker was renowned as one of South Africa’s most important “modernist” painters, and like his contemporaries Alexis Preller and Cecil Skotnes, developed a unique and distinctive style of “afro-surrealism” for which he became known and loved amongst local collectors. Stanley Pinker was greatly famous for his notable pintings "Night" and "Death of a shepherd" that are now in South African National Gallery.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Ons Land

    1957

  • Still Life

    1957

  • The welder

    1974

  • The Wheel of Life

    1974

  • Gone but not forgotten

    1976

  • Sun and moon flower

  • A Self Portrait as a Cactus (In Search of a New Muse)

  • God/Dog

  • His and Hers

  • Locquats

  • Man and Car

  • Nude Under a Bridge

  • Sailor and His Bride

  • Sleeping Dog

  • The Embrace

  • Way to the Garden

  • Window on District Six

  • A Girl with an Umbrella

  • Lazing in the Sand Dunes

  • The Bathers

Views

Stanley Faraday Pinker adhered to the artistic traditions of Cubism and Pop Art.

Quotations: "Essentially the flat background does the footwork in my paintings; it is usually a base colour, or colors, and it sets the mood... In each case it is with the background that it all begins. It is my first concern, long before I start with the detail. The components of the imagery then assert themselves on the flat space in terms of their shape, line and colour."

Connections

Stanley Pinker was survived by his children Stephen, Merete, Matthew, and grandson Mateo.

Grandson:

Mateo Pinker

Son:

Stephen Pinker

Son:

Merete Pinker

Son:

Matthew Pinker

tutor:

Maurice van Essche

tutor:

Alistair Grant