oil on board

Artwork date: 2002
Signature details: signed and indistinctly dated bottom left; printed with the title on a label and adhered with a newspaper article on the reverse

(1)

43 x 55.5 cm; framed size: 61 x 74 x 4.5 cm

Provenance:

Private collection, Cape Town.

Natalie Knight Gallery, Johannesburg.

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

With an artistic career that spanned almost 5 decades, Alfred Thoba is a modernist South African painter who is well known for his politically charged artworks that are not afraid to discuss racism, urbanization, poverty and the westernization of traditional values and practices.

No Freedom in South Africa, created in 2022, is the last known artwork made by Thoba before his passing in that same year. The artwork depicts two large white angelic figures and two smaller female figures that are of colour standing further in the background, all beneath an overarching tree. The dark green colours of the tree stand in contrast to the deep reds that creep along the edges of the painting. The tree in this image takes the shape of a lung, a recurrent theme in his use of “branches and leaf clusters often resembling internal bodily organs”[1]. Thoba’s unique technique includes thick paint that is texturized with the help of a tool like a matchstick or stick, with sand sometimes being added to the paint to differentiate areas and build embossed sections.

Each work is accompanied by written narratives-cum-titles, which give voice to his, often controversial, opinions on politics, sex, news, violence, belief and discrimination. In the catalogue of the artist’s solo exhibition at the Wits Art Museum in 2018, art historian and curator Julia Charlton notes that his “individualistic style of writing, both in expression and form, is not linear and his thoughts can sometimes be difficult to decipher. What is clear is his drive to communicate”.[2] Thus, each work becomes a mysterious question of what the artist was trying to communicate within the many layers of meaning and misunderstanding.

Africa Please Do Help People are Using Sophisticated Weapons in Sex. Weak People Get Shot, accompanied by a newspaper clipping from an unknown publication, is another example of the overlaying of his truths and thoughts. Thoba was known to use newspaper articles as his reference material, in the case of this lot the article, titled Sexism is evil, says US bishops, is an apt starting point for art that is not scared to argue and debate any subject.

It is up to each viewer to ponder the various parts of the artwork and create their own narrative, and although he is sometimes viewed as a contentious artist, Alfred Thoba’s unflinching honesty and a distinctive artistic style has cemented him as an important, but perhaps still widely unsung, contributor to South African art history.

Notable local and international group exhibitions include the 100 Artists Protest Detention without Trial exhibition at the Market Gallery in 1988; Panoramas of Passage: Changing Landscapes of South Africa at Joseloff Gallery in Connecticut, USA (1995); Halakasha! Soccer Exhibition at Standard Bank Gallery in Johannesburg (2010); and We Love Mandela at South Africa House, Trafalgar Square, London, UK (2013) amongst others. His work was also included in the artist, Sue Williamson’s anthology Resistance Art in South Africa in 1989. His works form part of various private and institutional art collections and My Private Love Affair (1991) was acquired in 1994 by the Iziko South African National Gallery.

[^{1] Alfred Thoba: A step becomes a statement. (2018). [Exhibition catalogue]. Wits Arts Museum, Johannesburg, 13 March to 3 June 2018, p.3}

^{[2] Ibid, p.2}

COLLECTIONS:

The artist is represented in numerous local and international collections, notably the Johannesburg Art Gallery; RMB Art Collection, Johannesburg; Museum Afrika, Johannesburg; Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town; Standard Bank Corporate Collection, Johannesburg and the University of the Witwatersrand Art Museum, Johannesburg.