Artists

Iris Ampenberger was born in Cape Town in 1916. She studied art in both Port Elizabeth and Johannesburg. She married the artist Stefan Ampenberger and the couple travelled South Africa in a caravan for seventeen years; drawing, painting, and exhibiting. In the mid-1960s, they settled in Thaba ‘Nchu in the Free State and joined the Bloemfontein Group, which was founded by Father Frans Claerhout, Alexander and Marianne Podlashuc, Reneé le Roux, and Eben van der Merwe in 1958. While her husband focussed on landscapes, Ampenberger’s greatest subject was portraits and figures. She was honoured with a retrospective exhibition in 1976 at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein. Her works are held in prestigious public collections such as the Pretoria Art Museum and the William Humphreys Art Gallery in Kimberly.