Notes

Douglas Portway is an important figure in the history of non-figurative and abstract art in South Africa. Born and raised in Johannesburg, Portway studied at the Witwatersrand Technical College during the 1940s and initially worked as a realist painter. A travel grant to the United States in 1952 enabled Portway to encounter directly the painterly innovations heralded by abstract expressionism, prompting him to recalibrate his ambitions as a painter. Four years later, Portway, now working in a Cubist-inspired manner, was selected to show work on the 1956 Venice Biennale. He emigrated a year later and eventually settled in Ibiza in 1959. Despite the break with his homeland, Portway’s canvases retained elements of his earlier colour schemes, notably black, white, grey and beige.¹ This fine abstract composition is typical of the spectral forms and atavistic markings Portway incorporated into his increasingly mystical canvases.

¹ Josef Paul Hodin (1983), Douglas Portway: A Painter’s Life, London: Art Alliance Press. Page 46.

Sean O’Toole

Exhibited

Josef Paul Hodin (1983). Douglas Portway: A Painter's Life, Philadelphia: The Art Alliance Press. A similar example is illustrated in colour on page 17.