Artist Database

'Erik Laubscher was born in 1927 in Tulbagh, and grew up in Port Elizabeth. He received the first of his formal training at Maurice van Essche’s Continental School of Art in Cape Town. His application to further his studies at the Michaelis School of Art was rejected and he decided instead to go to London. It was in London that the young artist realized that while he was receiving a solid formal training with Frank Slater, and shortly thereafter the Anglo-French Art Center, that it was the art emerging from Paris in which he recognised a kinship.

In 1950 he traveled to Paris and secured studio space at the Académie Montmartre whose director was Fernand Léger. While not a pupil of Léger’s, Laubscher remarked later when interviewed that he never forgot the former’s presence and guidance in those studios. Laubscher’s early period (1947-1955) show the young artist’s admiration for the work of Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Paul Cézanne, Bernard Buffer, Fernand Léger and others working with strong palettes and visual construction. Laubscher returned to Cape Town in 19512 and began exhibiting with members of the New Group. In 1956, he received a special commendation at the Venice Biennale. Laubscher also became a paint consultant and salesman for the company now known as Plason. He was the founding director at the Ruth Prowse School of Art, a position that he held until retiring in the mid-1990s.'¹

^1. Phillippa Duncan (no date) Erik Laubser: Still Life, unpaginated.