Notes

Though originally trained as a painter at the University of the Witwatersrand under Douglas Portway, Cecil Skotnes worked as a graphic artist and print maker for most of his career. He relocated with his family to Cape Town in 1978 where he resumed painting again, producing some resplendent still lives. The works of this period are infused with a distinct fervour as the brightness and colour he observed in the Cape is conveyed in the paintings of this time.

This panel is a shallow engraving highlighted and painted with pigment to emphasise form and the quality of the wood. By engraving directly into the two-dimensional surface of the wood, Skotnes has created large, monumental forms, displaying the mature assurance of an artist in complete command of his vocabulary. In an interview with Skotnes, art critic Neville Dubow asserts: “You have rediscovered yourself as a painter in your Cape Town years” and that “there is an optimism in the work, a rediscovered certainty of touch. The simple joy – not a term one has call to use all that often – in the act of painting seems to have resurfaced. And that is reflected in the way the surfaces glow in their colour and tonal range.”¹

Skotnes was highly regarded in his lifetime – chairing various councils, recipient of numerous coveted awards (including the highest official homage South Africa accorded its artists – the SA Akademie Medal of Honour in 1976), and exhibiting locally and internationally at prestigious events, including his representation at every Venice Biennial in which South Africa took part between 1958 and 1968 – and remains one of the most important post-war South African artists today. His influence is pervasive and his unparalleled contribution to the development of the arts in South Africa is evinced in the work he did at the Polly Street Art Centre and with the Amadlozi Group.

¹ Dubow, Neville. (1996) ‘Landscapes of the Mind’ in Harmsen, Frieda. Cecil Skotnes. Pretoria: self-published. Pages 115-116.

Exhibited

The Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg