Notes

Moving bronzes by the gifted and impulsive Dumile Feni, particularly those cast in the artist’s lifetime, are increasingly rare. With his subjects rooted in social realism, and his style characterised by emotion and instinctive figural distortion, the majority of his best works are treasured by institutions and collectors. Heart-wrenching sculptures such as Anguished Woman, with its graceful silhouette and sorrowful, almond-shaped eyes, might be strikingly beautiful, but they also evoke the sense of oppression and injustice that Dumile associated with the political regime under which he lived until 1968.

Dumile moved in the so-called Polly Street circles in the early 1960s, and worked closely with Ephraim Ngatane. After catching the attention of Madame Haenggi, the fearless and progressive Johannesburg gallerist, he exhibited at her Gallery 101 and Adler Fielding Galleries from 1964. Thereafter he received increasing international attention: his work was selected for the São Paulo Biennale in 1967, as well as for shows at the Antwerp Museum of Art in Belgium and the Grosvenor Gallery in London. The spirit of resistance in his work that attracted European gallery-goers, however, marked him as a political dissident at home, and the growing pressure he felt from his government forced him into exile in 1968, first in London and then New York.

Anguished Woman is a pre-exile bronze, made late in 1967 or early 1968, in his final months in South Africa. Four castings were produced for a Mr Bernard Janks of Johannesburg, an early supporter of the artist’s work. Other castings are included in the collection of the University of Fort Hare and the Bruce Campbell Smith Collection at the Norval Foundation.

Provenance

Bernard Janks.

Thence by descent.

Literature

EJ de Jager (1992) Images of Man, Alice: Fort Hare University Press, illustrated in black and white on page 63.

Prince Mbusi Dube (2006) Dumile Feni Retrospective, Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg: Wits Press, another cast from the edition illustrated on page 28.