Notes

The artist attended the Académie Ranson from 1952, studied under Gustave Singier at the École des Beaux-Arts. Exhibited at Galerie Bogroff, Salon des Réalities Nouvelle, and Galerie Creuze, Paris.

My work has always been concerned with energy, motion and the flow of life – first subconsciously, later consciously. I have always painted, drawn and explored. I could not have done so without my years in France at the Académie Ranson in Paris, or without Professor Souriau at the Sorbonne, and fabulous colleagues and friends. I would also not have achieved my goals without reinventing cubism for myself first. Cubism had only gone halfway and dispensed with the object, leaving the old language of painting to replace the object in a now objectless world. Abstract art followed. Confusion about what to do with this new freedom also followed – and it still exists. I returned to the object with the intention of breaking it up. I dispersed the fragments into the formidable and static old background space, disrupting that plane and making it an active part of the image. I started combining object and background space in a mutual exchange. Shakespeare summarised our very busy lives as entrances and exits from the stage of life. In Exit from the Stage there is an interplay between background, foreground and body fragments. The lines of the dancer’s body have been broken open, her surroundings no longer pressure her body, she no longer has to push against it. She has become part of it and it part of her. She is free.
Nel Erasmus