Sebidi was forced to leave school after Grade 8 owing to financial need. In 1959 she went to Johannesburg to work in domestic service and as a dressmaker. Here she encountered urban life of which she had only heard through the stories of her elders. She remembers those years as being hard because many people did not like her because she stood up for herself and refused to be treated as less than fully human.
Sebidi worked for a German woman artist for some time, and one day her employer did a painting of a woman with children. When Sebidi saw it, she felt a strong desire to paint also. The woman gave her a box of paints and Sebidi proceeded to paint some oil works on hardboard. These were of naturalistic rural scenes depicting traditional people working communally. After this she could not stop her desire to paint.
Sebidi felt she needed a teacher and in 1970 she met the Sowetan artist John Koenakeefe Mohl. Immediately there was a connection between the two, and Sebidi started studying informally with Mohl. Mohl helped her to come to terms with Western illusionism and taught her the technique of 'fine art.' She did not have to pay him, but returned his kindness by bringing him gifts.
During this time Sebidi's grandmother Metato became very sick and Sebidi returned to Marapyane to care for her. Grandmother Metato was in fact Sebidi's mentor. She instilled a respectable consciousness for productive work inside the young Helen. Metato was both a traditional mural painter and a potter. Sebidi recalls that when people were annually carrying out the process of decorating their homes, they wanted her to be there. The people in her village did not paint to restore their walls, but rather to renew the wall patterns that they had painted the previous year. The fact that the decorative images changed every year is very interesting because it shows that 'tradition' is not a process of repetition, but is evolutionary.
Sebidi stayed in the village for eight years, looking after both her grandmother and uncle. Throughout these years she continued with her art and made many beautifully detailed paintings. These were of the naturalistic world around her, the world she knew: the veld (bush), the huts and the working women, all done in glorious colours and full of light. She also made a few trips to visit Mohl, to whom she had become very close. He became her father as well as her critic.
Mohl not only praised her work, but he framed it and arranged for Sebidi to exhibit at the 1977 'Artists Under the Sun' show in Joubert Park in Johannesburg. Her atmospheric rural scenes sold well to white purchasers, which is probably owing to the fact that she made no harsh social comment, but merely depicted the black peasantry at one with nature.
Sebidi's grandmother died in 1981 and with the death of her uncle in 1983, she could now consider her own future. In 1985 she met Lucky Madlo Sibiya. On showing her work to him, he suggested that she break away from the familiar and develop new ideas. Sebidi agreed, saying that she needed criticism as well as praise of her work. in the same year she became involved with the Katlehong Art Centre in Germiston. There Sebidi used her knowledge of traditional clay forms and began making pottery and terra-cotta sculptures.
Before his death in 1985, Mohl encouraged her to build up a collection for solo exhibition. Sebidi worked with this idea, both for her own sake and in memory of Mohl. In May 1986 she had an exhibition consisting of her paintings, pots and sculptures at the FUBA gallery in Johannesburg. She was the first black woman artist to hold a solo exhibition in South Africa.
Also in 1986, Sebidi joined the Johannesburg Art Foundation. There, working with Bill Ainslie and Ilona Anderson, she began to discover endless new possibilities. Her breakthrough came when she discovered abstraction and the liberating technique of collage, with its element of surprise. Sebidi initially continued drawing figures at the studio: feet, hands and portraits. At the end of the year there were piles of her drawings on her carpet, and she wondered whether she could develop a work out of them. She told herself: "Now break all this in pieces and see what comes out."
She started to produce large-scale expressionistic human forms which dominate the picture plane, creating compositions rich in meaning. People have always been Sebidi's focus and it is that love of people that makes her art non-judgmental. Her constant use of the human form emphasizes that the people of South Africa have to be acknowledged.
During these years she was teaching at both the Katlehong and Alexandra Art Centres. The conditions in these riot-torn areas were a strong influence on her works to come.
In the years 1987 and 1988 Sebidi participated in the Khula Udweba Art Teachers' Project, organised at FUNDA by the African Institute of Art. At the same time she had various other exhibitions. These include the 1987 Standard Bank National Drawing Competition and the prestigious 1988 Triennial. She was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to travel to the United States and to exhibit at the 'Worldwide Economic Contemporary Artists' Fund Exhibition' in New York. During her trip to the United States, she gave lectures at the Yale and Mississippi Universities. She also attended a 45-day workshop in Washington and worked with various black American artists. She was surprised to find how similar black American culture is to black South African culture. She even spent six weeks painting at an artist's retreat in upstate New York - the Edna St. Vincent Millay Colony for the Arts.
In May 1989 she was invited to visit and exhibit in Sweden, together with Cape Town artist Sue Williamson. While this exposure to international art was a significant experience, her work was not visibly affected by what she saw. "It's good for an artist to move around," she says, "but you can't be influenced by the images of people with whom you have not grown. You have to know yourself and you have to have your own images: it's the only way you can grow; it's what you are born for."
Sebidi's greatest achievement came when she received the 1989 Standard Bank Young Artist Award. This was a tribute to her as "an artist of courage and vision," and "a woman of worth and insight."
Sebidi grew up in a racist South Africa and her life was shaped by the immediate confrontation of Apartheid. Colour controlled every aspect of personal, political and social life. South Africa's migrant labour system took men away from the rural life and forced women working in cities to send their children home to be raised by their grandparents. Thus her art cannot be assessed meaningfully unless she herself is contextualised within South African society.
Sebidi's work is about being a black woman in South Africa and originates from personal experiences. She expresses her responses to the difference between rural and urban life. She feels that people are literally torn to pieces by the conflict and tension of the South African city. She describes the city as "a place with no laughter," and "where people don't look up to God anymore." She took these two worlds and brought them together by taking traditional black concepts of femininity and developing her own creativity within a Western-orientated art world.
Seeing the lives of women in the townships spurred her on to create large paintings in a claustrophobic pictoral space. These fragmented works, consisting of disjointed body parts, are metaphors for the overcrowded townships because this is where violence and psychological tensions are created. This distortion of overlapping figures and animals that push and shove against each other in a struggle to survive, is a vision of Africa that is frightening.
Her work clearly comes out of an unhealthy politicized society. Art historian Marion Arnold considers Sebidi as "a black woman artist whose evocative and powerful images are a product of life in South Africa in the late eighties." Sebidi herself would not say that her works are political: "I don't want to call things political because I think it's social - why should we call it political? What is political? I feel that anything that comes out of me is life." on being asked about the importance of art in her life, she responded: "My works show life, tradition, tears and happiness and show me the way I should go. I am creating the best in my own way."
Sebidi's will to survive - overcoming self-pity - and her desire to succeed motivated her. She then achieved visibility as an artist because of this determination and positive personality.
John Koenakeefe Mohl
Born 1903 Dinokana, Zeerust, Western Transvaal
Died 1985 Zeerust, Western Transvaal
Mohl was a painter of landscapes, figures and of rural and urban life. He worked mainly in oils.
Studies: Windhoek School of Art, Namibia; five years in Düsseldorf, West Germany.
Profile: He was a member of Artists under the Sun. He also gave art classes in Sophiatown, Johannesburg.
Exhibitions:
He participated in group exhibitions from 1943:
1943 Transvaal Art Society, which was the first of several solo exhibitions
1963 Apollo Gallery, Johannesburg, joint exhibition with Mizraim Maseko, who produced works in leather
1965 Piccadilly Gallery, London, African Painters and Sculptors from Johannesburg
Award: 1943 South African Academy of Art Award
Lucky Madlo Sibiya
Born 1942 Vryheid, Natal
Sibiya is a painter who uses themes from Zulu mythology, traditions and customs. He works in oil and powdered pigment on carved wood panels, paper or canvas. As a sculptor he creates free-standing works in wood, bone and metal. As a graphic artist, he makes serigraphs and woodcuts.
Studies: He received some guidance from Cecil Skotnes and Bill Ainslie, but was mainly self-taught.
Profile: In 1975 he produced 15 hand-printed woodcuts entitled "Umbatha", based on the play by Welcome Msomi, which were exhibited in London and Tel Aviv. From 1953 he has lived in the Transvaal, initially in Sophiatown, then in Soweto and presently in Hammanskraal. In 1974 he visited Europe and the United States.
Exhibitions:
He has participated in numerous group exhibitions held throughout South Africa and in Swaziland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Botswana, France and the United States.
1971 Gallery 101, Johannesburg, the first of many solo exhibitions
1979 Contemporary African Art in South Africa, touring
1981 Standard Bank, Soweto, Black Art Today Exhibition
1985 Tributaries, touring South Africa and West Germany
Represented:
Arts Association Namibia Collection; Durban Art Gallery; Sandton Municipal Collection; South African National Gallery, Cape Town; University of Fort Hare; University of the Witwatersrand; William Humphreys Art Gallery, Kimberley.
Public Commission:
Mural, Leratong Hospital, Krugersdorp, Transvaal.
The Katlehong Art Centre
The Katlehong Art Centre is in Katlehong, near Germiston outside Johannesburg. The building itself has a vibrant atmosphere created by the colourful murals, the roof and two large sculptures in front of the building. The building consists of a single large room, where pottery, painting, weaving, sculpture and jewelry design occur. It was founded in 1969, when the centre began with a group of 6 artists, who formed an art society. Lucas Sithole, Morningstar Motaung and Stanley Nkosi were involved initially. After funding was received from both private and public sectors, it grew into a more formal art centre.
A cash flow had to be developed in order for the centre to function and grow. Therefore the artists were promoted and started selling their works very successfully throughout South Africa. Venues included and include the Everard Read Gallery, The Goodman Gallery, Helen de Leeuw, African Magic, Bryanston Market, Peter Roos Park, FUBA and Artists under the Sun as well as in Cape Town at Lizzards and at the African Arts Centre in Durban.
The Katlehong Art Centre's aim was to create public awareness of black art and to teach artists how to market themselves and thus become self-sufficient artists. It was also a way to create a professional South African black art, without it being labeled traditional or township art. One of the directors said: "It is our aim to bring awareness of the potential and talent lying untapped in the community and to bring together nations to share in a common culture in the future."