Artist Database

Breyten Breytenbach is an internationally celebrated artist, writer, poet and anti-apartheid activist. He studied at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town and was a founder member of 'Die Sestigers', the influential group of Afrikaans writers and intellectuals who opposed and challenged the dominant political, social, and cultural mores of the Apardheid regime. He went into self-imposed exile in Paris in the 1960s and was not allowed to return to South Africa after marrying Yolande Ngo Thi Hoang Lien, a French woman of Vietnamese ancestry, since that was regarded as a transgression of the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949. He visited South Africa clandestinely in 1975 and was arrested and sentenced to nine years' imprisonment for high treason.

Breytenbach's paintings and prints have been exhibited locally and internationally in Paris, Amsterdam, New York Stockholm and Hong Kong, and his poetry, novels and essays have been published in Afrikaans, English, French, Dutch and German. He is now a French citizen and resides in Paris, but travels extensively internationally as a visiting professor, writer and teacher.