Artist Database

Simon Stone was born in 1952 in Lady Grey in the Eastern Cape. He attended Michaelis School of Fine Art and graduated in 1976 with an Advanced Diploma in Fine Art. This was followed by a study tour of Italian Renaissance Art in Italy. In the 1980s Stone worked as a part-time lecturer in lithography at the University of Witwatersrand and as a part-time teacher at the Johannesburg Art Foundation. He currently lives and works in Cape Town.

Stone is a prolific painter who has built an impressive reputation over the years. He is best known for his symbolic collage paintings of landscapes and figures created in a variety of media including oil, gouache and encaustic. Stone began making his own artist sketchbooks in 1984. He paints in these books each day, creating preliminary motifs for his canvases.

He has been the recipient of a number of awards, including the Irma Stern Art Scholarship Award, University of Cape Town in 1976, and a Merit Award in the Volkskas Atelier in 1986. In 1993 he received the IGI Life Vita Art Now Lifetime Merit Award and in 1997 was the recipient of the New York City Award from the Ampersand Foundation. The documentary video Imagining Stone, featuring Stone's life and work was recently produced by ARTMeetsTV.

Simon Stone has exhibited extensively in both solo and group exhibitions, locally and internationally. Notable solo exhibitions include a major museum retrospective presented by SMAC Gallery at the Standard Bank Gallery in Johannesburg, South Africa (2013), accompanied by the publication Simon Stone: Collected Works; Both Sides of Now at SMAC Gallery in Stellenbosch (2014). He has been featured in a number of group exhibitions include Back to the Future: Abstract Work in South Africa Past and Present I and II at SMAC Gallery in Stellenbosch (2013 and 2015); Paperwork in Stellenbosch (2014); PAINT I: Contemporary South African Painting 2002-2012 (2013); and the Ampersand Foundation Award 21 Years Celebration Exhibition at the University of Johannesburg Art Gallery (2019). Stone has also participated in numerous art fairs, including the Investec Cape Town Art Fair, RMB Latitudes Art Fair in Johannesburg, Artissima in Turin, Miart in Milan, and FNB Art Joburg. Additional group show highlights include Suitcase Show, a collaboration with Galleria Massimo Minini (2019).

Image source: https://www.artskop.com/artist/simon-stone-48