A Street in New Brighton

Notes

This painting forms part of Pemba’s portfolio of street scenes and documentation of life in the segregated township of New Brighton in Port Elizabeth (Gqeberha). Compared to Pemba’s vibrant works that bustle with action, the present lot is rendered in a subdued palette that complements the quiet neighbourhood setting. There is an air of calm beneath the powder-blue sky as one figure rests against a leaning tree and others casually make their way down the puddled street. Though the neat row of houses in the painting is a reminder of the apartheid government’s directive of regulation and control in townships, there is also a tender spirit of community held in their closeness and the everyday movements of passersby. Reflecting on Pemba’s depictions of outdoor spaces, Jacqueline Nolte writes that the paintings are ‘all quiet orderly arrangements, at times indicating that yearning for an even more expansive quiet beyond’.¹ The present lot embodies how, for Nolte, this longing is particularly expressed in the ‘characteristic ‘Pemba sky’ comprising washes of gentle blues, greens, mauves and hints of yellow.’²

^1. Jacqueline Nolte (1996) ‘Sources and Style in the Oil Paintings of George Milwa Mnyaluza Pemba’, in Hayden Proud and Barry Feinberg (eds), George Milwa Mnyaluza Pemba: Exhibition, Cape Town, South African National Gallery, 27.4.-28.7.1996, Cape Town: South African National Gallery, exhibition catalogue, page 44

^2. Ibid.