Notes

Young Girl was produced during what has been referred to as Sithole’s transitional period – after he completed his studies at the Vlakfontein Technical College in 1948 until his enrolment at the Polly Street Art Centre in downtown Johannesburg in 1959.¹ At the time, he was employed at a traditional arts and crafts shop in Johannesburg’s city centre, before terminating his employ to fully immerse himself in the commercial gallery world.

In the seminal publication on the artists of the era, Polly Street: The Story of an Art centre, author Elza Miles notes how Cecil Skotnes attributed “the attenuated proportions found in the work of artists like Lucas Sithole…to Praying Woman (1959) by [Sydney] Kumalo. [Skotnes] maintains that this piece had an ‘enormous’ effect on many young African artists…”. Interestingly, Miles concludes: “Lucas Sithole, who started to attend the art centre in 1955, carved the figure of a slender child [Young Girl] in wood in 1957 – two years before Praying woman. The child’s body is attenuated and [her] pose, arms crossing [her] breast, faintly foreshadows Kumalo’s figure.”²

¹ http://www.sithole.com/Transition.htm
² Miles, Elza. 2004. Polly Street: The Story of an Art Centre. The Ampersand Foundation. South Africa and the United States of America, page 70.

Provenance

Gallery 21, Johannesburg.

Richard Harvey, Sandton.

Adler Fielding Gallery, Johannesburg.

Literature

Miles, Elza, Polly Street: The Story of an Art Centre, Ampersand Foundation, Johannesburg, 2004, page 70, illustrated in colour, with the title Child.