Algerian painter Abdallah Khaled, born in Kabylia, Algeria, in 1954, is a Modern Expressionist, trained in Algeria and later in Italy. He is also a supreme colorist. Sixty-two color-saturated canvases, dating from 1986 to 2007, feature in this catalog of his exhibition held at the Städtische Galerie, Landshut, Germany, December 13, 2007 to January 13, 2008.

Adam Henein’s art harks back to Egypt’s pharaonic artistic heritage, but his is a very modernist sensibility. Born in 1929 into a Coptic family in Cairo, Henein studied at the school of fine art and spent 25 years in Paris. In 1996 he moved back to Egypt and in the same year founded the international sculpture symposium in Assouan. Henein is best known for his bronze and stone abstract sculptures, but he is equally adept in creating delicate papyrus paintings using natural pigments in warm earth colors as well as ink drawings. This hefty catalog presents Henein’s complete oeuvre, including his magnum opus “Vaisseau d’Adam” (Adam’s ship). In the essay by Fatma Ismaïl his long and productive life unfolds.

This visual retrospective of Ethiopian artist Afewerk Tekle, the first modern artist of Ethiopia, belongs to the genre of hagiography. Tekle set up a studio in Addis Ababa and began receiving official commissions in the 1950s following art training in England. It was during his years in England that he met Sylvia Pankhurst, who became his mentor. Richard Pankhurst, Sylvia's son, who writes the biographical text for this volume, knew Tekle when they were both young men. Chiefly illustrated, this volume reproduces works by Tekle and photographs of the artist at work and at many official ceremonies both in Ethiopia and abroad. He is noted for his stylized generic portrait paintings and for stain-glassed windows. He has also executed a monumental bronze equestrian figure of Ras Makonnen in Addis Ababa. His more recent work, since the 1974 revolution, adapts to the austere socialist climate in Ethiopia, and Tekle seems to have retained his eminence within the new Marxist regime.

Chief Afi Ekong, a doyenne of modern Nigerian art, has followed a unique career path. Born in Calabar, she studied fashion design and painting in London during several postings there of her husband, Abdul Azizi Atta. Back in Nigeria Afi Ekong moved in elite social and political circles and quickly achieved acclaim as the first woman to hold a solo art exhibition in Lagos (1958). She was active in promoting arts councils in Nigeria and ran the Bronze Gallery in several venues in Lagos. From the 1950s to the present, she has continued privately to paint along with her public charitable activities. Now widowed and retired in her native Calabar with five chieftaincy titles to her credit, Afi Ekong has opened a new Bronze Gallery in Fiekong Estate.

In this catalog more than sixty paintings and drawings are reproduced spanning five decades of her corpus. Her choice of subject matter tends toward landscapes, flowers (she loves flowers), and scenes of daily life, depicting women in particular. A short (unsigned) biographical essay and excerpts from reviews and critiques of her work comprise the text.

Agness Yombwe (known as Buya) is an unsung hero. She took up drawing early on and was the only woman in her class at Evelyn Hone College of Applied Arts and Commerce in Lusaka, in 1987—and has never looked back. Today she and her artist husband, Lawrence Yombwe, run the Wayi Wayi Art Studio and Gallery in Livingstone, Zambia. In this catalog, Buya presents mostly her recent art series—social issues, seedpod sculpture, ‘tonse balilya’ (disregard of tradition), taboos, and Pentecostal Sunday. She is not a feminism, but she is definitely an activist. Fellow artist William Miko provides an informative essay on Buya’s career in “Who is Buya anyway?”

The Musée Ianchelevici, in Belgium, invited Aimé Mpané to exhibit his views of “social and political reality” on the Democratic Republic of the Congo and beyond. Through sculptures, installations and performance, Mpané addresses Congolese/African history, tragedy, trauma, and survival. Among his themes are Ota Benga—the Pygmy who was put into a human zoo—the slave trade, and colonial atrocities in the Belgian Congo. Eddy Devolder describes each of these historical themes. Roger-Pierre Turine discusses the motivations and symbolism and how “the artist links the past with the present.”

Aina Onabolu (1882-1963) holds a revered position in the history of twentieth-century Nigerian art. Though not a great painter, he was undoubtedly a trailblazer, a promoter of art, and an advocate of art education. Initially self-taught, he achieved some acclaim as a portrait and landscape painter in Lagos during the decades 1900 to 1920. In 1920 he set sail for England and France, where he studied art at St. Johns Wood School, Académie Julian in Paris, and the Royal Academy of Art in London. Back in Nigeria, he set about laying the foundation for art education in this British colony whose educational curriculum excluded art. An art syllabus was eventually accepted. Onabolu’s other noteworthy legacy was inspiring a younger generation of artists. He was also instrumental in getting Kenneth C. Murray invited to Nigeria to teach art, a move that had far reaching ramifications for Nigerian art.

This catalog is the first, rather belated, effort to pay tribute to Aina Onabolu. A modest publication, it does, however, reproduce numerous Onabolu paintings and drawings, most never published before, though the quality of reproduction leaves much to be desired and many works are undated. The National Studios of Art in Lagos, which have been named in Onabolu’s honor, hosts an active art program today, and their programs are described. The catalog also includes an essay by Kunle Filani on the social status of artists in Nigeria today.

Albert Adams is missing from the South African art history book, but this retrospective rectifies that omission. Sadly, the artist died before the exhibition and catalog were realized, so they now stand as memorial and tribute. Artist Peter Clarke writes a moving remembrance of his boyhood friend. Adams studied at the Slade School of Art and spent most of the rest of his life abroad with occasional trips home. Best known for his prints and graphics, Adams also executed fine paintings. He favored portraits (and self-portraits) and figures, haunting and poignant, never sentimental. Apes and monkeys are metaphorical subjects that recur in his work. His last series of works (2006) dealt with the dark topic of Abu Ghraib.

Albino Neves e Sousa (1921-1995) was a Portuguese-Angolan painter best known for his colorful paintings of Africans as ethnographic types. Some were portraits; some illustrated rituals and ceremonies, including Carnival. These portraits were typically stereotyped depictions of women—bare-breasted and laden with jewelry and other body ornaments. He also painted landscapes and murals commissioned for public buildings in Luanda. A poet as well, Neves e Sousa published and illustrated his poetry books. His travels took him to other Portuguese African territories—Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, Sao Tome e Principe—as well as Brazil where he later settled. All of these settings offered people and landscapes for his painting.

Born in1884 in Russia, Alexander Roubtzoff studied art at l'École nationale des beaux-arts de Saint-Pétersbourg and became a winner of the Grand Prix of Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts. Another award in 1914, a scholarship to study art abroad, took him to Tunisia, then a country under French occupation. The Russian revolution in 1917 prevented him from returning to his native country, so he took French citizenship and lived the rest of his life in Tunisia, which he loved, and where he died in 1949. He employed his rich repertoire of artistic techniques to document Tunisian life; his paintings of gardens, beaches, and fields are rendered in soft and elegant postimpressionist colors. His original naturalist paintings of ordinary people capture their outward look as well as the intensity of their inner emotions. He was active in the artistic and intellectual circles in Tunisia and participated in many exhibitions in France, but he was not concerned with the art market. At his death, he left more than 3,000 paintings and studies. They all convey a deep concern for the real and the true, not the exotic.

The next year, 1996, another book on Alexandre Roubzoff was published: Alexandre Roubtzoff (1884-1949): une vie en Tunisie / by Patrick Dubreucq. Courbevoie: ACR, 1996. 264 pp.

Ali Bellagha was born into a family of Tunisian artists – father and grandfather. Although exposed to the arts at a young age, he went on to study law, but ineluctably was drawn back to artistic pursuits. After graduating from art school in Paris in 1955, he returned to newly independent Tunisia and became immersed in the fervor of the nationalist spirit of cultural recuperation. He opened an art gallery “Les Métiers” in Tunis, which became a locus for the cultural renaissance of the period. He himself became a central figure on the local art scene and part of the Ecole de Tunis. His painting utilizes traditional Tunisian imagery, both figurative and decorative. It is a rich and varied oeuvre illustrated here in this catalog.

Ali Omar Ermes left his homeland, Libya, to study in England. He graduated with a diploma in design from the Plymouth School. Upon returning to Libya, he engaged in painting, writing and consulting. He then moved back to England where, living in exile, he continues his involvement in art and writing. As his resumé (pp. 40-44) indicates, his works include numerous publications, as well as many group and solo exhibitions.

The artist’s works consists of dazzling painted Arabic letters dancing against various backgrounds of swirling colors over which drift fine lines of Arabic poetry. His brush strokes and compositions give these paintings a wonderful musicality. At the core of Ermes’s artistic philosophy is a belief in the continuity and interdependence of all traditions and thoughts, which, flowing through the stream of time, are guided by a kinship of individual freedom and humanity.

Essays by Riad Allah, Venetia Porter, and Dale Agee provide useful commentary on his artistic philosophy and the cultural significance of his work.

Almighty God, the artist, does not claim to be God. Rather he gives thanks to Almighty God for his personal salvation. Asked about this, he says he is a preacher and a painter. Full stop. Almighty God, born Kwame Akoto, began his apprenticeship painting signboards and lorries, but then he found religion. He also found expatriate buyers for his paintings and diversified his thematic repertoire. He now runs a thriving art enterprise located in a large outdoor studio on a busy roundabout in Kuamsi. His portraits and paintings are often didactic and moralistic, sometimes surrealistic and typically inscribed with titles and admonitions (e.g., “A man who dresses as a woman deserves the reprobation of God.”). In this catalog is a broad and diverse selection of his paintings. Includes essays by Duccio K. Marignoli, Enrico Mascelloni, and Sarenco.

When Aly Ben Salem held his first exhibition in Tunis in 1934, he was something of a rarity—an academically trained Tunisian and a Muslim. His paintings were and still are narrative and poetic, celebrating traditional ways of life. He had even worked for a time at the Musée des arts indigènes, where he developed a sense of the importance of the object. He studied at the Musée des beaux arts in Tunis, graduating in 1936. The next year he was commissioned to decorate the Tunisian pavilion in Paris at the Exposition internationale des arts et techniques dans la vie modern. Ben Salem met prominent artists while in Paris and was invited to exhibit his work in Sweden, where he met his future wife, artist Hédia-Kristine Nelson.

Although he has lived most of his professional life as an expatriate, first in Paris, but mainly in Sweden, his work becomes if anything even more Tunisian in character. His ethnographic interest manifests itself in close attention to dress, gesture, furnishings and other artifacts of daily life. Among his earlier paintings are a series depicting Tunisian craftsmen, leatherworkers, weavers, and marble engravers. His later work has the flat perspective of glass paintings and of overall designs of illuminated miniatures. Ben Salem worked in several media—oil, watercolor, gouache, and underglass (sous verre). His palette is drenched in colorful, light pastels. His compositions are full of flowers and fanciful fauna. In addition to Ben Salem’s paintings, there are tapestries designed by him, but fabricated by his wife. Fifty-nine works are reproduced in color, spanning his entire career.

The third of El Anatsui’s retrospective exhibitions in 2010 was held in Japan, clearly a testimony to his global reach and appeal. Most of the art on view is from the artist’s collection, including the revealing preparatory sketches. Beautifully photographed, the works selected focus as much on his woodworks as on the more famous metal sculptures.

The catalog essays provide a deep context to the art and cultural artifacts that inspire and influence Anatsui - - Kente cloth, adinkra, wood mortars, akua’ba, ibeji, and, of course, the tin cans, bottle caps, and other detritus. Essays are by Yukiya Kawaguchi, Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie, Tsutomu Mizusawa, Shozo Akutsu, Charles Gore, Hisashi Matsumoto, Shoichira Takezawa, Bisi Silva and Chris Spring.

Angele Etoundi Essamba is, as she states, “obsessed with how to represent the body, in particular the female body.” Since moving from Cameroon to Europe when she was ten, Etoundi Essamba has dedicated over thirty years to photographing the strong and proud African woman. Beginning with stunning black and white photographs, she has used photography, a medium used by photojournalist and others, which has created and upheld an African Other, to continually challenge stereotypes about the African woman. She has since incorporated color and documentary photography into her oeuvre, maintaining her central focus on the African female form.

In this retrospective, entitled Strength and Pride, 200 photographs, several videos, and a collection of poems and essays, highlight Etoundi Essamba’s themes of femininity, and the roots and rootlessness of Mother Africa. The exhibit is divided into eight series: black and white; veils and unveiling; beyond colors; territories; mother nature; transition 1; transition 2; and invisible. Etoundi Essamba’s focus is clear – exposing the strong and prideful black African woman. Included within this monograph are a number of essays, the 200 featured photographs, as well as screen caps from the videos representing Etoundi Essamba’s extensive work.

António Ole is one of Africa’s successful installation artists. Born in Luanda, Angola, in 1951, he studied film at UCLA, but became a visual artist instead. His works, which incorporate video, photography, and found objects, cry out about Angola’s war-torn history, devastation and poverty. Things rusty, yellowed, pock-marked, peeling, broken, cracked, scorched and improvised characterize his work.

António Ole’s artistic career began as a teenage graphic artist, and this retrospective exhibition catalog starts there in 1968. Moving on to his 1970s series of black-and-white photographic portraits of Angolan refugees, and then to his 1980s carnivalesque, colorful paintings, one can see his progression and evolving themes and styles. By the 1990s, his paintings become more subtle, softer with a quieter palette. The 1990s also witnessed his move to sculpture, mixed media and installation, such as his Township Wall series. Ole has never shied away from tough themes--war-torn Angola, legacies of the slave trade, survival in the face of hardship, and human resilience despite the odds.

Excavation and appropriation are hallmarks of António Ole’s œuvre, which breathes second life into found objects and forgotten places of Angola’s traumatic history. The slave trade, forced labor, wars, and life among ruins are themes Ole explores through photography, film, sculpture, and installation. To capture and keep alive a collective memory of Angola’s history are what fuels his creative drive. This retrospective exhibition, shown in Germany and Kenya, sums up four decades of one of Angola’s most important artists.

“Luanda, Los Angeles, Lisboa” in the title of this catalog maps the triangulation of António Ole’s career as an artist. These cities are where he lived, studied, and worked. In the interview by Isabel Carlos, Ole elaborates on this geographical trajectory and how it has informed and inspired his art production. Nadine Siegert’s essay present a well-organized chronology of his artistic evolution. We can also follow the artist’s progression through the color illustrations of his art arranged chronologically. His best known installation series Township Wall, which spans the years 1994 to 2004, also reveals his visual storytelling (pp. 154-157).

Ato Malinda, born in Kenya in 1981 and raised in the Netherlands, returned to Kenya as a teenager before traveling to the U.S. for undergraduate work in art history and molecular biology. She completed an MFA at the Transart Institute in New York. She lives and works in Nairobi.

This volume demonstrates Malinda’s performance-based approach to investigating colonial history, gender, memory and power, based on her residences abroad in Cameroun, Curacao, and Kenya, and informed by postcolonial and postmodern theory. Photographs of her performance work are accompanied by essays. Content: Homeless /by Nancy Hoffmann -- Ato Malinda, the water sprite / by Didier Schaub -- A real imaginary / by Simon Njami -- Identity nudity / by Nathalie Mba Bikoro -- The performative nature of built space / by Ato Malinda -- A Black man's view, a white man's taboo / by Ato Malinda -- Politics of art and the art of politics / by Ato Malinda.

Her work as a performance artist, a relatively unknown art discipline in East Africa, consists of performance, drawing, painting, installation, video, and ceramic object-making, photographs of which make up this volume. Malinda aims her efforts at making performance art more accepted in East Africa. She seeks to dispel the notion of a stereotypical unitary African identity, focusing instead on identity issues, female, racial, and cultural and on issues of gender, female sexuality, and LGBTQ identity. She has also examined ideas of “africanity,” the hybrid nature of African identity, and contesting notions of authenticity.

Malinda was a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow (2015) and was in residence at the National Museum of African Art. She was a 2016 honoree of the Museum’s first African Art Award Dinner. Ato Malinda has exhibited in numerous countries in Africa, Europe and the Caribbean.

Although born in Paris, Yto Barrada is deeply invested in Tangier— not the Tangier of cosmopolitan myth, but the communities of underdogs, disadvantaged and victims, who make up her Tangier. Her spirit of activism is clearly reflected in her photography and installations as is her concern for the children of Tangiers and the raw urban environment. The remnants of colonialism also figure in her work.

Contents: Yto Barrada sees Tangier / Jan Goytisolo -- Something new about plants (biographical sketch) / Marie Muracciole -- Internal/external / Jean-François Chevrier & Yto Barrada --A grammar of Tangier : a conversation with / Sina Najafi.

Moroccan artist Yto Barrada was named artist of the year in 2011 by Deutsche Bank. This catalogue was published alongside Barrada’s exhibition at the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin that year. It features many illustrations of Barrada’s work, essays, and a chronology of Moroccan history and Barrada’s life. Her working and spiritual environment is Tangier, Morocco, where she documents and celebrates the real people, telling the non-official stories of survival, adaptation and resourcefulness. Best known for her photography, Barrada also does video installations and sculpture. Featured here are several of her art projects: Beau Gests, Gran Royal Turismo, The Strait Project, Iris Tingitana, Playground, and Lyautey Unit Blocks.

Friedhelm Hütte writes about Barrada’s focus on her home city, Tangier, as the subject of her photographs. Barrada explores her city as a place many are waiting to leave, seeking better lives in Europe. Hütte describes Barrada as an artist who focuses on ordinary life in Tangier, and Marie Muracciole also emphasizes Barrada’s preference for gathering fragments together rather than focusing on the spectacular or monumental. Okwui Enwezor writes about how Barrada’s work is concerned with the ‘burning’ or distress of being caught between worlds—one where you can no longer survive, and another where you are not welcome. Daniel Soutif describes how Barrada treats different views of Tangier, whether they show its beauty or its decay, as equally significant. Also included is a conversation between the artist and Negar Azimi about what the government ignores and what it focuses on and how this affects the city.

Barthélémy Toguo is the epitome of the global artist whose artwork transcends that of the exotic African artist in Europe. Without eschewing his Cameroonian roots, he reaches for universal themes – violence, prejudices, religious fanaticism, power structures, and resistance. His work has been described as radical, subversive, ironic and even ethical. He is clearly an artist who works in many media and with a broad aesthetic vision. In this exhibition catalog of works from the late 2000s, we encounter watercolors, collage, installations, performance art, even mail art. The exhibition was held at the Musée d'art moderne de Saint-Etienne métropole, Saint-Etienne, France, February 23 to May 26, 2013.

Along with teachers from the Ecole, and writers, Belkahia started the journal Souffles, which was anti- colonialist and anti-government. In 1969 Belkahia organized an exhibition of contemporary art in Jamaa al-Fna Square in Marrakesh. This show drew the government’s notice and they began to place Belkahia under pressure, which led to his resignation five years later. Belkahia became interested in rejecting the prevailing idea that Western art was ‘real’ art and wanted to present art as universal – something belonging to and existing in all cultures. From here, Belkahia stopped painting in oils, framing his work and producing figurative images. He began using copper, as it is used in a lot of Moroccan craft. When there was a pending shortage of copper, Belkahia turned to another traditional craft material, animal skin, on which he used natural pigments such as henna, cobalt and saffron.

Fouad Bellamine, born in 1950 in the medina of Fez, grew up within its architectural enclosures, which greatly influence his painting. Architectural motifs – arches, niches, domes, cemeteries – permeate his work. A true intellectual, Bellamine early on met and interacted with French artists, including the Support/Surface group. He began experimenting with “painting” indigo ink on felt. In the early 1980s he moved to Paris to exhibit and study art and philosophy. Returning to Morocco in 1989, he found the art world to be very small, but began collecting contemporary Moroccan art and curating shows, honoring older artists and supporting younger ones. He even established a library of contemporary art.

Bellamine’s painting uses a muted palette – black, gray, white – sometimes, monochromatic, only occasionally, brighter colors – with broad brushstrokes, showing the interplay between shadow and light. He describes his painting as non-figurative rather than abstract. More recently, he is experimenting with digital photography, including one controversial series “The origin of the world,” which borders on the pornographic. Although not a deeply religious man, Bellamine addresses religious issues in his art and has an affinity with the freedom of Sufism.

Ben Enwonwu is a seminal figure on the contemporary art scene in 20th-century Nigeria. This in-depth examination of his life and career situates Enwonwu at the nexis of Nigeria’s colonial encounter and the introduction of modern art practice in mid-century. Enwonwu was active from the 1930s until his death in 1994. As a school boy, he studied with Kenneth Murray and later at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. He served as Nigeria’s first art advisor. Despite his pre-eminence, Enwonwu has been somewhat overshadowed by the rise and prominence of the younger generation of Zaria art students, and, Ogbechie would argue, written out of the history of 20th-century Nigerian art. The aim of this dissertation is to revise the discourse of 20th-century Nigerian art and to reposition Enwonwu within that history.

The fame and reputation of Nigerian artist Ben Enwonwu have outweighed critical assessment of his work. It is this vacuum in art criticism that Ogbechie seeks to fill through an analysis of Enwonwu's life and work, his stylistic development, and his place within the larger context of Nigerian academic art in the mid-20th century. Enwonwu's paintings and sculptures are discussed at length in separate chapters. With each, Ogbechie examines the multiple styles that define Enwonwu's corpus and the formal and technical solutions by which he achieves his essentially humanistic expression. Several individual works are singled out for closer scrutiny, e.g., "Anyanwu." The external realities that have influenced Enwonwu's art are also highlighted: Igbo aesthetics, Negritude and the idealization of Africa, and Western academic art conventions, among others. The identity crisis, which beset Enwonwu's early career, remained unresolved in his latest (1987) exhibition.

Artist Ben Enwonwu (1917-1994), Nigeria’s pioneering modernist, straddled the colonial and postcolonial eras, attempting to balance competing constituencies - - the colonial establishment which supported him, the younger generation of artists who followed him, and his own creative and political needs. Deeply influenced and inspired by Igbo aesthetics and philosophy, Enwonwu turned again and again to the vigorous imagery of Igbo masquerades and dancers.

Ogbechie’s narration of Enwonwu’s story challenges Eurocentric neglect of African modernists. Here was an artist who achieved international acclaim early in his career, received a royal commission for a statue of Queen Elizabeth II, became Art Advisor to the Nigerian government, befriended Leopold Senghor and espoused Negritude. Clearly, this is an essential book for anyone interested in African art and Modernism.

Reviewed by Sunanda K. Sanyal in African arts (Los Angeles) 44 (1) spring 2011, pages 93-94.

Nigerian painter Ben Osaghae died mid-career, which makes this monograph even more valuable. He was an independent artists concerned with social and political realities rather than the expectations of the Lagos art market. His painting style was figurative but highly expressive. He liked color, broad-brush strokes, and flat background of a single color that allowed the figures to float. Osaghae trained at Auchi Polytechnic (1982-1986) and later taught there. In 1999 he moved to Lagos where he had already participated in several exhibitions at Signature Gallery, Didi Museum, the Russian Cultural Centre and Mydrim Gallery.

Unlike many Lagos artists, Osaghae was angry about socio-political realities in Nigeria. His paintings, sometimes caustic, sometimes ironic, clearly reflect this anger. They chronicle the life of city people and their struggles—electricity outages, police harassment, prisons, thieves, injustice, corruption.

We hear Osaghae’s voice throughout—explanations of his approaches to painting, his influences, and commentary on particular paintings. In the final chapter, Osaghae shares his art philosophy. Who would have known his fate would come so soon? His legacy is encapsulated in one sentence: “No other artist has been able to portray so vividly the liveliness, complexity and vibrancy of Lagos life.” (page 133).

Few artists in Africa have had monographs devoted exclusively to their life and works. Takawira, one of the most prominent of the Zimbabwe stone sculptors, is a logical choice for the first in a series of "Prominent Sculptors of Zimbabwe." Guthrie, who runs the Gallery Shona Sculpture-Chapunga Village, writes of Takawira's background and artistic development. Frank McEwen, formerly director of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Harare, contributes his reflections on some of Takawira's recent works, which he has seen only from photographs. Takawira himself speaks about individual works. This book illustrates around sixty works, ten in color. Also includes photographs of Takawira and information on the types of stone and tools he uses.

By 2003 when Berni Serale was honored with the Standard Bank Young Artist Award, her art career was already well launched. This catalog presents her main body of work from 1999 to 2003, including Colour Me, Discoloured, Snow White, A Matter of Time, and Home and Away. In photos and videos, she uses her own body to explore gender and race within the context of South Africa's peculiar history.

Bettie Cilliers-Barnard’s long artistic career has evolved from accomplished but conventional still lifes and portraits to “figurative abstraction” and on to “nonfigurative abstraction.” In other words, it is a journey into modernism, undoubtedly influenced by her sojourns to Paris in 1948, 1956, 1964, 1971, and 1981. She was in fact one of South Africa’s conservative pioneering modernists, along with Walter Battiss and a handful of others. As she became more confident in abstraction, she delved deeper and experimented with mystic symbolism. By the 1970s and 1980s she returned to a figurative abstraction, populated by ethereal humans and birds. Dreams and visions rather than social commentary characterized her work of this turbulent time. As South Africa spiraled downward, Cilliers-Barnard’s work became increasingly inward, timeless, and other-worldly. Muller Ballot methodologically, meticulously unfolds this life in art. Extensive bio date and photographs are included.

Skipping over the introductory chapters on Yoruba arts and woodcarving in particular, we arrive at Bisi Fakeye’s birth in 1942 at Ila-Orangun, Ekiti. A sixth generation carver in the great Fakeye family of carvers - - Lamidi Fakeye being the best known - - Bisi apprenticed under Uncle Lamidi. Although Bisi went through school up to teacher training college, he abandoned teaching for carving. Moving to Lagos in 1968, Bisi interacted with formally trained artists, developed a more commercially based practice, and became part of the Lagos art scene. After FESTAC 1977, he settled into the studios on the grounds of the National Theatre. Adepegba analyzes Bisi’s stylistic evolution away from traditional Yoruba sculpture and thematic evolution toward art for art’s sake.

Brett Murray, a 1989 graduate of Michaelis School of Art, Cape Town, is regarded as impish but earnest. He is thought of as trickster by some, and traitor by others. His art, as in Hail to the thief, is a revolt against injustice, and an attack on abuse of power and official corruption.

Satirical in his critique of religion, as in Hero (2001) and Sleep sleep (2006), Murray is also critical of racial culpability and complicity; modern-day neo-tribalism; and “white studies.” Frequently, his art is self-deprecatory, as in his public sculpture I love Africa, (2000). As in his exhibitions White like me (2002), and in New beginnings (2006), Murray’s art is a bold mix of the comical and the tragic to express the ironic. To accomplish this, he uses various media, including, paintings, sculpture, silk screen, video, and etchings.

South African Breyten Breytenbach is better known as a writer and activist than as an artist. His poetry and painting are a creative continuum. Their metaphor and symbolism weave text and image into a coherent whole and feed into each other. A “fundamentally dissident Afrikaner,” Breytenbach fell afoul of the apartheid government and of many in the Afrikaner community for his “betrayal of the regime.” His poetry, written in Afrikaans, earned awards and recognition, but his imprisonment, radicalization and exile cast him indelibly as an outsider. His autobiography True confessions of an albino terrorist (1984) cemented his reputation.

In this Breytenbach anthology, two of the fourteen chapters specifically address his paintings: Chapter 9, The I of the beholder: identity and place in the art and writing, by Marilet Sienaert; and Chapter 10, A detail: the butterfly in “The thieves and the word” from All one horse, by Sandra Saayman. Also included is an extended 2001 interview with Breytenbach: Chapter 11, Dancing the dog: paintings and other pornographics, interview by Marilet Sienaert.

Reviewed by Laura Wright in African studies review (New Brunswick, NJ) 48 (2) September 2005, pages 177-179; by Mark Sanders in Research Afrcan literatures (Bloomington, IN) 37 (3) fall 2006, pages 209-210

South African poet and painter Breyten Breytenbach is better known at home as a poet, but in Europe where he lived many years in exile, it was as an artist that he achieved recognition. Now he is returning to South Africa for his first solo exhibition there, and this book is published for the occasion. It contains two essays on Breytenbach; one by Marilet Sienaert, "Painting the eye," the other by John Miles, "Ons reis deur die landskap, die groot-groot nie-plek." Breytenbach offers his own perspective on his life and career in "The first hand-story." Twenty-seven paintings and drawings are illustrated.

Reviewed by Melanie Grobler in De arte (Pretoria) 49, Julie 1994, pages 53-55.

This collection of six essays addresses questions of social identity by probing the way in which identity is constituted in the writings and paintings of South African Breyten Breytenbach. The emphasis throughout is on identity as a dynamic process, persistent permutations of self. Born in 1939 into an Afrikaner family, Breytenbach became an exile and activist and cultural nomad. Included also is an interview with the artist.

In August 2012 Bruce Onobrakpeya marked his 80th birthday amid much celebration in Lagos. For its part, the National Gallery of Art in Nigeria published this catalog with a long essay by Simon O. Ikpakronyi and short tributes by colleagues, fellow artists, art collectors, students and friends. Ninety-seven plates of Onobrakpeya’s art works from 1957 to 2012 are included.

In Jewels of nomadic images Onobrakpeya carries forward his artistic experimentation with series of miniature plastocasts, low-reliefs which can be worn as pendants or incorporated into installations or larger composite works. Onobrakpeya is nothing is not prolific, especially considering that this body of work was conceived and executed between 2006 and 2009. Essays by Olu Amoda, Peju Layiwola, and Ekpo Udo Udoma.

"The spirit in ascent" documents Bruce Onobrakpeya's work for the extremely creative decade 1967 to 1978, during which the master printmaker developed and perfected several print techniques. It is a period in which Onobrakpeya reached a level of maturity and assuredness in his art. It also marks his move away from easel paintings, his university major, to full-time printmaking. In 1967, he set up and equipped a print studio in Lagos, which has become a center of creativity and training in Mushin -- Ovuomaroro Art Studio.

Onobrakpeya's prints are luxuriant in patterning and color, just as they are saturated with cultural referents and deeper meanings. Onobrakpeya is a true medium through which Nigeria's many cultures take visual form -- his own Urhobo, but also Yoruba, Hausa and others. His imagery is accessible, yet symbolically rich at the same time. He illustrates folk tales, most notably Amos Tutuola's My life in the bush of ghosts, which led to a whole series of prints. He has also done Christian-inspired works, but even these have a Nigerian flavor. Among his last paintings are a Stations of the Cross mural series for a church in Ebute Metta, Lagos (illustrated here).

In this volume Onobrakpeya publishes dozens of his works -- many in color -- and offers his very personal, unpretentious explanations for what inspired him and what he is portraying. Biographical information and photographs are also included. In 1989, Bruce Onobrakpeya was awarded an honorary doctorate by University of Ibadan; citations from that occasion are reprinted.

Bruce Onobrakpeya: the spirit in ascent complements his previously published visual anthologies -- Symbols of ancestral groves and Sahelian masquerades, which together document the later years, 1978-1988.

Reviewed by Ayo Elebute in Thumbprint (Ibadan, Nigeria) 1, 2003, pages 76-78.

Bruce Onobrakpeya is one of the few modern artists in Africa who has systematically published collections of his works and writings. Sahelian masquerades continues this effort. Earlier compilations include Symbols of ancestral groves (1985), Sabbatical experiments, 1978-1983 (1983) and a series of limited edition Print notes and comments (nine of which have appeared to date).

The arid Sahel of Northern Nigeria, a region Onobrakpeya first encountered during his student days in Zaria, inspired the present series of artistic experiments. The illustrated works include plastographs and metal foil reliefs. Onobrakpeya gives a brief explanation of each and offers his poetry as complementary text.

In addition, there are seven of Onobrakpeya's essays addressing more general themes: "Nigerian visual arts since 1960," (pages 46-54), "Tourism, arts and culture: Nigeria's untapped export goldmine," (pages 62-72), "Exotic worlds and European fantasies," (pages 74-80), "Role of women in arts," (pages 85-89), "Traditional arts and crafts in Africa's educational programme," (pages 90-93), "Nigerian art: influence of traditional tales and culture through the ages," (pages 94-101), and "Nigerian and foreign patronage of the arts," (pages 104-110).

Reviewed by Bolaji Campbell in Kurio africana; journal of art & criticism (Ile-Ife) 1 (1) 1989, pages 132-134 [127-129 in revised edition]; by Emma Ejiogu in West Africa (London) no. 3732, February 27-March 5, 1989, pages 316-317..

Bruce Onobrakpeya is fond of naming his art works in indigenous Nigerian languages, not only his native Urhobo, but several others as well. This very conscious tendency reflects his ecumenicism within a fractious Nigeria and reveals a deep respect for the "symbols of ancestral groves," which ultimately bind Nigerians together.

Onobrakpeya has been a role model for other Nigerian artists in many ways, not the least of which is his assiduous documentation of his œuvre through publications. Symbols of ancestral groves is but one in a continuing series to visually track phases of his career. This one covers the years 1978 to 1985 during which he perfected his plastocast and plastograph deep etching processes. For the works illustrated in this book, Onobrakpeya takes the reader on a personally guided tour, carefully explaining the meaning and content of each. The reproductions, while not of high quality, are sufficiently good to allow one to follow along with his story. Biodata and bibliography on the artist are included as well as a glimpse of his Ovuomaroro Art Studio and Gallery in Mushin, Lagos -- a mecca for Onobrakpeya aficionados.

Reviewed by Jean Kennedy in African arts (Los Angeles) 20 (1) November 1986, pages 90-91.

Bruce Onobrakpeya is an exemplar of Nigerian modernism who blends several strands of “ethnic, national, international and modernistic impulses” in his work. Best known as an experimental printmaker, Onobrakpeya studied painting at the Nigerian College of Arts, Science, and Technology in Zaria (predecessor of Ahmadu Bello University) where was a member of Zaria Art Society (later dubbed the “Zaria rebels”).

In this thesis Singletary explores these four themes in Onobrakpeya’s work. Under the ethnic rubric are Urhobo (Onobrakpeya’s own ethnicity), Bini, Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa/Fulbe. Cultural pluralism and unity in diversity are represented by Onobrakpeya as positive national identity. Taking humanistic themes beyond Nigeria, some of Onobrakpeya’s work is religious in nature (largely Christian) or even political. The modernist impulses in Onobrakpeya’s work are more about style, color and composition than about theme. Ever an experimenter, Onobrakpeya has also tried sculpture and installations (his shrine sets). More than 140 reproductions of Onobrakpeya’s work are illustrated from the earliest in the 1950s up to 1999.

Appendix I is a full curriculum vita. Appendix II contains an interview with Bruce Onobrakpeya recorded over the period December 1996 to January 1997. Appendices IV and V document Onobrakpeya’s experiments with creating ideograms based on Urhobo culture.

This book is the published version of Singletary’s doctoral dissertation on Bruce Onobrakpeya completed in 1999 (see Singletary, 1999) with no substantive revisions or updates.

The story of Côte d’Ivoire artist, Frédéric Bruly Bouabré (born 1923), who created 400 hundred pictograms, based on one-syllable words in his language, Bété, to help people in the Bété community learn to read more quickly. His pictograms "form a specific African writing from scenes of human life," according to the artist. Today a number of people continue to use Bruly Bouabré's alphabet, and museums around the world have exhibited his drawings.

Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, self-taught artist from Côte d’Ivoire, zoomed into international spotlight in 1989 with the “Magiciens de la Terre” exhibition. Since then, he has attracted considerable following, particularly in Europe, from those fascinated by and collecting work of naive and visionary artists. In 1995, he was selected for this Paris exhibition at the Musée national des arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie for the Galerie des 5 Continents--Bruly Bouabré, representing Africa.

This book documents the Dia Center for the Arts exhibition of the work of Italian Alighiero e Boetti and Ivoirien Frédéric Bruly Bouabré. The idea in juxtaposing two artists from different countries and backgrounds was to compare and contrast their shared interest in signs, alphabets, and letters. For the catalog, the curators (Cooke for Boetti, Magnin for Bruly Bouabré) collected short essays and commentaries from a variety of writers.

Contents includes: Script reading / by by K. Anthony Appiah -- Detached thoughts on a basic exhibition / by by André Magnin -- Boetti and Bouabré: beginnings / by by Kevin Power -- Jeu d'esprit / by by Lynne Cooke -- Alighiero e Boetti in flight / by by Bice Curiger -- Alighiero e Boetti / by by Ramon Alejandro -- Apricots and pomegranates / by by Francesco Clemente -- Alighiero & Boetti: Ordine & disordine / by by Jean-Christophe Ammann -- Alighiero, Alexander, Atlantis / by by Warren Niesluchowski -- Love is like that--love is violent / by by Thierry de Duve -- The prince of ethnologists / by by Jean-Hubert Martin -- Frédéric Bruly Bouabré and his artistic project / by by Yaya Savane -- The African Museum of Bruly Bouabré / by by Francisco Jarauta -- Bruly / by by Jean-Jacques Rullier -- Bruly Bouabre: a reversed view / by by Ulrich Loock -- Kindred intervention / by by Matteo Boetti -- Letters to Alighiero e Boetti from Frédéric Bruly Bouabré -- An interview with Frédéric Bruly Bouabré / by by Yaya Savane -- A text for Frederic / by by Alighiero e Boetti -- Alighiero e Boetti: biography and bibliography -- Frédéric Bruly Bouabré: biography and bibliography -- Works in the exhibition.

Fodé Camara, a painter from Senegal, is the subject of this study which examines his technique and method (“attack and struggle”) and his thematic repertoire. In his engagement with oils on canvas, he sometimes uses his hands directly on the surface. Death and mortification of the body are themes in Camara’s work, a preoccupation arising from the death of his father, a victim of Guinea’s notorious Camp Boiro.

Camara’s works in series. His early (1981-1982) series on the observations on the body relate specifically to the trauma of the death of his father and his own obsession with mortality. The series “Envelopes” (1982-1983) centers on the humble postage stamp and envelope. Later series deal with mass culture, and urban public transportation. His most recent series of paintings (at the time this thesis was written) is the French Revolution in the tropics (1988-1989). By now Camara had clearly established his distinctive painting style.

The second in the African collection series, like the first, features one of Africa’s self-taught ‘intuitive’ artists: Seni Camara from the Casamance, Senegal. In 1989 she was one of the “magiciens de la terre,” whose terracotta figurines—“stentorian figures with children emanating from them”—featured in the exhibition of the same name. Childless and inspired by dreams, Camara still lives and works in the village Bignona where she sells her art in the market. Presumably she has sold a good many to the Fondazione Sarenco, which are showcased in this catalog.

Seni Camara (Serigne Mbaye Camara) lives with her husband and family in the village of Bigona in the Casamance region in southern Senegal. Working outside the local tradition of making pots and "useful" objects out of clay, Seni claims that through a "gift of God" she has been able to create thousands of bizarre, magnificent creatures-clay sculptures of astonishing originality. Although the villagers don't know quite what to make of Seni and her art, she continues to work to support her family and to satisfy her own creative urge. The film follows Seni and her husband as they prepare the materials of her art. Together they dig up the hard dirt of the land and slowly mix it with water and sand until the clay is ready to be molded (she tells by taste). While Seni does the intense work of shaping the wet clay into her truly original forms, her husband prepares the final dye bath by harvesting and soaking wild nuts in water. Finally they fire the sculptures and dye them. Seni then carries her creations to the market where she sells them to the occasional western tourist (for the equivalent of $100 to $400) who happen to stumble onto her market stall where her sculptures share space along with the vegetables and other odds and ends on her table.

Seni's work is powerful - strange half human creatures giving birth to other, little laughing creatures, each stranger than the last. Heads come out of knees and bodies grow out of other bodies. They are Seni's fertility sculptures, her children. "Seni's Children" provides a wonderful example of an artist who uses traditional materials to make strikingly new and original work. The film has an original music score by the West African musician Foday Musa Suso.

Video artist Candice Breitz finds the moving image quite liberating after growing up in a South Africa without television. TV was allowed in South Africa only in 1976, and even then programming was tightly controlled. She is also enamored with pop culture and its images disseminated through mass media. The female body and its pornographic appearance in pop culture became the theme of her early Rainbow and Rorschach series of photographs. The subsequent Babel series moves from still photography into videos of cascading and overlapping voices. Her latest Mother + Father video installations feature clips of well known Hollywood stars expatiating on motherhood or fatherhood. These works and others are featured in this 2005 solo exhibition in Italy. Candice Breitz, who trained in South Africa and the United States, now resides in Berlin.

Reviewed by Rory Bester in Art South Africa (Cape Town) 5 (1) spring 2006, page 88.

Berlin-based South African artist Candice Breitz creates odes to pop culture figures - - Michael Jackson, Madonna, John Lennon - - through the medium of video and their fans’ karaoke sing along. In a new video series Him and Her, she interweaves clips and movie stars Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson. This is a sequel to her Mother and Father series. All are featured in this 2008 exhibition in Berlin.

Candice Breitz, a mid-career South African video artist, is a student and observer of popular culture in America. Movie stars and celebrity musicians fascinate her. Even before moving to the U.S. in 1994, she was creating series of video art of celebrities, karaoke wannabes, and fans imitating their idols. This exhibition catalog includes essays by Octavio Zaya and Jessica Morgan.

Cecil Higgs, born on a farm in South Africa in 1898, studied art in Grahamstown and in London. She painted all her life and was known for her landscapes and still lifes rendered in an expressionistic style. Though she never married, her life entwined with close friends, as revealed in her diaries and letters, which are quoted at length in this biography. Bertram knew Cecil Higgs in the latter part of her life and is able to recontruct her personal history and how it paralleled the development of her painting. She participated in numerous group exhibitions from the first in 1935 in Stellenbosch, and held several solo shows, including a major retrospective in 1975.

Chéri Samba, who launched his painting career back in the 1970s as "Dessinateur Samba," has become an international artist through perseverance, audacity, and lots of luck. His work, as Jewsiewicki understates it, "is not held back by civilities." Samba tackles all the contradictions, atrocities, and infidelities of contemporary life in Kinshasa and beyond, and in so doing, he captivates an audience in the West. Jewsiewicki explores the nature of this fascination in terms of the dialectic of the Other.

Chéri Samba has caught the imagination of the West, or some part of it, with his frank, bawdy, satirical, uncompromising vision of contemporary Congo as expressed in his paintings. Characterized by realism and his ever-present running commentary in word-filled cartoon bubbles, Samba's paintings strike a fresh chord for viewers unfamiliar with this style. Though Samba regards himself with pride as one of Kinshasa's popular painters, he has clearly risen above the pack, at least to the extent of being given retrospective exhibitions, such as this one in Oostende, Belgium, and in London. Excerpts from interviews with Samba published here reveal the same brash, self-assuredness as his paintings. The central essay by Jean-Pierre Jacquemin ("Chéri Samba, his life and (im)pious works") tries to capture the spirit of Samba's œuvre -- the moralism, voyeurism, and narcissism. His early paintings in the Mammy Wata genre have been supplanted by more original themes. Samba's patronage has undergone shifts as well, not without influences on his art. Fifty-three paintings, dating from 1979 to 1990, are reproduced in color plates; others are illustrated in black-and-white.

Chéri Samba, known for his self-glorification, is quite ready to admit that there is no “harm in singing my own praises.” Extremely successful both at home in Kinshasa and abroad, Samba’s painterly style is direct, didactic, sharp, and always self-referential. One can actually see him age in his paintings from the mid-1970s to the present. This 2004 exhibition, however, focuses on his more recent paintings, mainly from the 1990s and 2000s. Almost all are from the Jean Pigozzi Collection, his biggest patron.

Born in 1931 in Tlemcen, Algeria, Choukri Mesli lives in Algiers where he studied at l’Ecole des beaux arts. The artist’s life, his studies, and his artistic development are revealed against the colonial background of his homeland. His many works are cataloged in this book. Mesli comments insightfully on his numerous paintings of women--and how he responds to feminist criticism. Mesli also includes a fairly long commentary and reflections on the artistic movement Ouchem (tattoo), which he and other Algerian artists founded in the 1960s. Biodata included.

Christian Lattier was a profoundly original sculptor who knew both success and torments in his life. Trained in France, where he discovered both his African roots and his distinctive medium: rope sculpture, Lattier returned to Côte d'Ivoire in 1962 in the euphoric wake of independence, but his prickly character and cantankerous genius put him at odds with the Ivoirien art establishment. Although he won the grand prize at the 1966 Dakar Festival and had exhibited in Europe, North America and Brazil, his career at home, especially during the final decade of his life, was marked by personality conflicts, battles with the school authorities where he taught (Institut National des Arts), and struggles against his own mortality. A smoldering, explosive temperament was masked by the image of a pipe-smoking professor and the whimsey of his car painted rose color.

Lattier's corpus embraces a remarkable diversity of subjects and themes. "Panthère," the larger-than-life crouching rope panther, one of his most powerful sculptures, won the Chenavard Prize in France in 1954, yet was turned down by three museums including IFAN. Lattier was bitter. "Panthère" seems far removed in spirit and intention from the emaciated "Christ" or his series of graceful, non-fearsome masks. He was not above slightly scatological humor, as in the work "Interdit d'uriner," which was a commentary on Abidjan. Nineteen of Lattier's sculptures are today in the Musée National de Côte d'Ivoire in Abidjan (see inventory, pp. 129-138).

Christian Lattier was a profoundly original sculptor who knew both success and torments in his life. Trained in France, where he discovered both his African roots and his distinctive medium: rope sculpture, Lattier returned to Côte d'Ivoire in 1962 in the euphoric wake of independence, but his prickly character and cantankerous genius put him at odds with the Ivoirien art establishment. Although he won the grand prize at the 1966 Dakar Festival and had exhibited in Europe, North America and Brazil, his career at home, especially during the final decade of his life, was marked by personality conflicts, battles with the school authorities where he taught (Institut National des Arts), and struggles against his own mortality. A smoldering, explosive temperament was masked by the image of a pipe-smoking professor and the whimsey of his car painted rose color.

Lattier's corpus embraces a remarkable diversity of subjects and themes. "Panthère," the larger-than-life crouching rope panther, one of his most powerful sculptures, won the Chenavard Prize in France in 1954, yet was turned down by three museums including IFAN. Lattier was bitter. "Panthère" seems far removed in spirit and intention from the emaciated "Christ" or his series of graceful, non-fearsome masks. He was not above slightly scatological humor, as in the work "Interdit d'uriner," which was a commentary on Abidjan. Nineteen of Lattier's sculptures are today in the Musée National de Côte d'Ivoire in Abidjan (see inventory, pp. 129-138).

Christo Coetzee was part of the French avant-garde of the 1950s and early 1960s, before returning to his native South Africa. His œuvre is re-evaluated in this retrospective look at his career, particularly paintings from the Paris period. In 1968 Coetzee returned to the inward-looking art world of apartheid South Africa where he was championed by Afrikaaners as one of their own. But the years in London and Paris remain his apogee. In Paris, the Galerie Stadler became his primary venue, and the owner Rodolphe Stadler amassed a major collection of Coetzee’s paintings, which have now come to South Africa. Coetzee’s major patron in London was photographer and decorator Antony Denney, who also owned a large collection.

This catalog focuses on Coetzee’s successful years on the international art scene and illustrates his brilliant abstract paintings and impressionistic still-lifes from the period. His non-political work has been overshadowed in the politicization of South African art of the last thirty years, but the time has come for a re-assessmen of the Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s and 1960s.

Reviewed by Eunice Basson in De arte (Pretoria) 67, April 2003, pages 96-99.

Soly Cissé’s paintings with heavily saturated colors are filled with anthropomorphic, zoomorphic and therianthropic forms, emerging from dark backgrounds. At least that was what he was creating circa 2010, the year that most of the paintings reproduced here were made. The single essay by Dominique Stella gives some context to his these works. The exhibition was held at Galleria Tornabuoni Arte, Milan, Italy, November 18 to December 10, 2011.

Coex’ae Qgam, a Naro woman, known by the name of Dada, became famous within her community as an artist of extraordinary character. She exhibited her work throughout Southern Africa, Europe, Japan, and the United States. A founding member of the Kuru Art Project, based in the small village of D’Kar in the Ghanzi district of Botswana, Dada was not only a painter and printmaker but also became the translator, spokesperson and ambassador for her art group and ultimately her tribe, the Ncoakhoe, or as the name translated, “The red people.” – from the book’s cover.

Reviewed by Sara Goldoni in Africa e Mediterraneo: cultura e società (Bologna) 11 (2) no. 75, dicembre 2011, pages 71-72.

The art of Conrad Theys, published on the occasion of the artist’s 70th birthday, highlights the artist’s contributions to the Cape Impressionist movement. The first two chapters summarize his early life and his later successes—as a black artist Theys faced challenges to be recognized in apartheid South Africa. The other chapters address the different types of paintings he produced. Theys prefers oil painting, but is also proficient with pastels, watercolors, and graphic arts. His work has several recurring themes—panoramic views of the Northern Cape, his homeland; quiver trees, a symbol to him of honest survival and which he uses as a form of self-portraiture; and clouds, which as bringers of rain, represent hope to Theys.

Dale Yudelman’s photograph of post-apartheid South Africa are homage to Ernest Cole, who documented life under apartheid. This visual essay in Yudelman’s “inimitably edgy style” is provocative, poignant, and humorous. All dimensions of the rainbow nation are covered. Much changed, much the same.

Dan Rakgoathe’s life story epitomizes the struggling black South African artist growing up under the oppressive apartheid era: the struggle to advance his art education, the struggle to gain employment, the struggle to achieve recognition as an artist, and personal struggles against alcoholism and, worst for an artist, blindness. A spiritual loner with a philosophic bent, Rakgoathe did have two soul mates. One was Cyprian Shilakoe, whom he knew at Rorke’s Drift but who was killed in 1972, and David Koloane, whom he met in 1981. Ratgoathe’s personal mysticism and spirituality are clearly reflected in his prints, the best of which were produced in the decade 1968 to 1978. In a final chapter, Langhan analyzes the style and content of Ratgoathe art, interwoven with commentary by the artist.

Reviewed by Juliette Leeb-du Toit in De arte (Pretoria) 64, September 2001, pages 101-103.

Deborah Bell is a very spiritual person. By her own account, Bell’s journey as a maker of art adheres to Gnosticism’s search for transcendence through spiritual revelations and discoveries of one’s true, inner Self. Her earliest work, a series of oil paintings depicting lovers, is overwhelmingly about claustrophobia, loveless couplings, and male dominance. But those works seem dated now, as her journey moves along.

Bell’s most evocative body of work is the Unearthed series of figures, which draw deeply and directly from recognizable West and Central African sculptural forms. She “discovered” African sculpture in the early 1990s at a time when South Africa was undergoing dramatic transformations and she, like other artists, began looking outward. More recently she is experimenting with brick clay, a harder, less malleable material than modeling clay. Her Sentinel series are tall guardian figures made from this extruded brick clay, whose overall form is dictated by the manufacturing process. She then shapes the figures by carving. Bell has also collaborated with William Kentridge and Robert Hodgins on print and animation projects.

Pippa Stein introduces Deborah Bell’s themes and techniques, and the artist shares some of her own insights into her work. Biodate is included.

Reviewed by Ingrid Stevens in De Arte (Pretoria) 70, September 2004, pages 68-70.

Nigerian artist, art historian and cartoonist, dele jegede is the subject of this volume of tributes, personal recollections and critiques by fellow Nigerians. There is a fair amount of repetition and overlap in these essays, as might be expected. It is a weighty tome (heavy paper stock, soft cover).

Contents: Part A. The context: the intellectual world of dele jegede -- 1. Introduction: the artist, his nation, and his audience / Adérónké Adésolá Adésànyà -- 2. The masquerade in the marketplace: dele jegede's introspections in colors and lines / Toyin Falola -- Part B. "Delelogues": interviews, commentaries and reflections on dele jegede -- 3. dele jegede, a cartoonist's cartoonist: commentaries from Nigerian cartoonists / Adérónké Adésolá Adésànyà -- 4. dele jegede: the artist and educator: a role model and revered mentor / Tolu Filani -- Part C. "Dramatizing creativity": jegede and the parody of the society -- 5. The fun of menace: four voyages around the world of Kole Omole / Tejumola Olaniyan -- 6. dele jegede and the Aworerin paradigm / Yomi Ola -- 7. dele jegede: on flower power and witty distortions of Nigeria's power and system failure / Okechukwu Nwafor -- Part D. The lens between: dele jegede, Nigeria and the transnational space -- 8. A brush with a paradoxically poor, oil-rich nation and other critical dialogues: Nigeria, Africa, and the African diaspora in the "prism-imagination" of délé jégédé / Adérónké Adésolá Adésànyà.

Part E. Intellectual interventions: dele jegede and African art history -- 9. Beyond his studio practice: the African art historian in dele jegede / Oluwole Famule -- 10. dele jegede: portrait of the art historian as an artist / Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie -- 11. Curating Africa: dele jegede and the imperative of "art" history / Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi -- Part F. Bull's eye: politics, activism and creativity -- 12. dele jegede, artistic strategies and the state / Onoyom Godfrey Ukpong -- 13. Sketching maladies, making meaning: dele jegede's 'scriptorium' and characterization of the Nigerian state / Adérónké Adésolá Adésànyà -- 14. Images of reason: jegede's cartoons in the years of waste / Krydz C. Ikwuemesi -- 15. dele jegede as an objective painterly eye / Olusegun Ajiboye -- Part G. Critical nexus: activism, humanism, and leadership -- 16. A Lagosian original: preliminary notes on the speech of the street / Akin Adesokan -- 17. dele jegede and his enduring legacy at the University of Lagos / Peju Layiwola -- 18. Monumental strides and humoristic vibrations: dele jegede as president, Society of Nigerian artists / Ola Oloidi.

Critiqued by Ogechukwu Ezekwem, Ben Weiss, and Daniel Jean-Jacques, "Art, parody, politics, and the production of Dele Jegede's intellectual space," Critical interventions: journal of African art history and visual culture (Abingdon, Oxon, UK) 9 (1) 2015, pages 59-71.

Demas Nwoko is thought of as one of Nigeria’s premier modern artists, but actually he moved away from painting and sculpture quite early in his career. Or rather, he shifted his creative energy into other endeavors. Less well-known outside Nigeria are his extensive architectural projects which incorporate vernacular styles, materials and aesthetics into contemporary, sustainable buildings. Nwoko himself claims he always wanted to become an architect, but found the formal training offered at Zaria too reliant on technical draftsmanship and engineering at the expense of art and creative design.

His first project was on Oremeji Hill in Ibadan where in 1967 he began what became New Culture Studios. This and sixteen more completed, designed but un-built, and ongoing architectural projects are featured in this book, including plans, elevations, and perspective drawings as well as color photographs:

Projected and completed buildings : New Culture Studios, Oremeji, Ibadan, 1967; The Dominican Institute, Ibadan, 1970-1975; Akenzua Cultural Centre, Benin City, 1972-1995; New Culture Pilgrims' Mosque proposal for Abuja, 1974-1977; House for Demas Nwoko, Idumuje-Ugboko, 1976; Country house for Alhaji Abdulazeez Ude, Abor, 1984; St. Paul's Cathedral, Issele-Uku, 1984-1988; House for Mrs. Josephine Aligbe, Idumuje-Ugboko, 1985; Miss Pearce Chapel, Issele-Uku, 1986; Church for the Daughters of the Divine Love, Enugu, 1986; Theatre of Hubert Ogunde, Yaba, Lagos, 1987; Benedictine Monastery, Ewu, Edo State, 1987-2005; Onobrakpeya Art Gallery, Agbarha-Otor near Ughelli, 1987; Lightweight steel-framed prototype office for ADDEC, 1995 -- Christ the King Parish Church, Idumuje-Ugboko, 1996-2006; Millennium Hill, 1999; Jesuit Chapel, Abuja, 2000. Nwoko also applies his design skills to furniture.

Reviewed by Frank Salamone in African book publishing record (Oxford) 36 (1) 2010, page 11; by Joseph Kenny in Nigerian field (Ibadan) 74 (1-2) April-October 2009, page 101.

Born in western Algeria to Spanish parents, Denis Martinez studied art in Algeria and in France and became one of the founders of the artistic movement Ouchem (tattoo)—a movement inspired by Algerian traditional culture and its aesthetic expressions. It derives its theme and motifs from the beliefs of Tuareg, Amazigh, and Arabs, their hopes, aspirations, and superstitions. To this North African cultural heritage, Martinez adds another dimension deriving from his Andalusian roots in Spain and its background in Phoenician and Mediterranean civilization that tie the Iberian and North African worlds.

Many of the exchanges shed light on the artist’s philosophy in general, and the meaning of some of his works, as well as his music. The conversation goes into the artist’s relationships with other artists and intellectuals, such as the Algerian poet Jean Senac, his protests against torture and repression, threats to his life during the civil war, and his exile to France during that war. Numerous paintings illustrate the book.

Malian designer Cheick Diallo takes récuperation to a higher level with the furniture and household accessories he designs at his studio in Bamako. Trained in architecture and design in France, Diallo established his design enterprise in Bamako where he uses local materials—metal, wood, leather, clay, cloth, nylon cord—and draws upon traditional artisanal skills. In 2012 the Musée Mandel in Italy organized an exhibition of Diallo’s design work.

Viyé Diba, a Senegalese artist living in Dakar, says himself that he is not an African artist, but a modern artist living in Africa. His work has evolved from small format painting to three-dimensional works to increasingly large metaphorical installations. His artistic discourse goes beyond a mere aesthetic expression. Whether it delves into the mysteries of communication, or raises environmental, social or political questions through the use of raw and recycled materials, Viyé's work explores the vital role of art and cannot be ignored.- - container.

Narrated by the artist in French with English subtitles. Features Viyé Diba’s contributions to Dak’art 1998 (the year he won the grand prize), 2000, and 2002 (where he did an installation based on Dakar’s cars rapides).

The œuvre of artist Viyé Diba has evolved through three distinct phases. In his first phase, the focal point of his paintings was a person, a central figure arrested in an organic composition. In the second phase, there is a move away from the isolated figure to a more complex environmental setting in which the color green predominates, and fields of space and equilibrium shape the composition. The third phase has become completely abstract and sculptural with Diba using vertical bands of wood wrapped in cloth as ground for mixed media paintings. The concern with the environment -- a "recycling aesthetic" -- becomes very apparent.

In an extended interview with Ousmane Sow Houchard, Diba talks about his work, his concerns as an artist, his preoccupation with the human environment, his views on the role of the artist in society, and in Sénégal in particular. In a section on "the artist at work," the creation of an original assemblage of wood, cloth and twine comes to life as "Rhythme Kangourou."

Reviewed by Mark DeLancey in African book publishing record (Oxford) 23 (1) 1997, page 15.

Dominique Zinkpè has matured as an artist; his experimental work evolved in the decade of the 2000s. Primarily a painter and drawer, he also does sculptures and installations. His recent series “Ibedji” is inspired by the Fon twin figures. Other spiritual forces pervade his art, deeply rooted in his cultural background. The metamorphoses theme emerges in his series “The Sacred” and “The Mirror of the Soul”—paintings of human-animal forms undergoing transformation. Short commentaries are provided by Delphine Cabu, Roger Pierre Turine, Elise Daubelcour and Zinkpè himself.

Focusing on new global architecture, his works show the influence of his homeland, where light defines the various structures of urban space, and give shape to the cityscapes in Europe and North Africa. An emphasis in these paintings is on the facades, which often alludes to a social reality of access, inclusion and separation.

Includes in the catalog are samples of other artists of similar artistic interests, such as Susan Hefuna, Mona Hatoum, Kader Attia, Mounit Fatmi, Tamara K.E. and Saâdane Afif.

Twenty years on from his death by heart attack, Dumile Feni’s reputation is solidifying and gaining stature at home. He left South Africa in 1968 and died in exile in 1991. Many of his drawings from the early years were destroyed as well as works he lost along the way of his nomadic life in exile.

This book follows on from the 2005 retrospective exhibition of Dumile’s work at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, which was curated by Prince Mbusi Dube. (See below). This is just volume 1 of a planned 3-volume set; it covers his South African years, birth until going into exile in 1968. The artworks illustrated are all from this formative period. Projected volumes 2 and 3 will cover his life in exile in the United Kingdom (volume 2) and in the United States (volume 3); neither has been published as of 2017.

Dube approaches his subject as biography and as art history and, of course, the intersection of the two. Yet the result is oddly marred by what may be the heavy hand of Dube’s “mentor and preliminary editor,” Ronald Dorris. The intrusion of a spiritual Afrocentrist, a second authorial voice, muddles the story.

Dumile Feni claimed he was not interested in politics, only in the human condition. But his art work speaks eloquently and powerfully about the political and social realities of the South Africa he grew up in and from which he exiled himself. This “Goya of the townships,” who died in 1991, is now embraced by his native country. Tracing his career from “Before exile, 1964-1968" to the “London period, 1968-1976" and finally to the “USA period, 1977-1991,” this retrospective exhibition brought together for the first time an impressively large body of Dumile’s work drawn from overseas and private collections.

A series of excellent essays by writers, most of whom knew Dumile at various periods in his life, provides the text for this catalog. One focuses on his most famous work, “African Guernica”; another on his erotic works. Drawing was his preferred medium and mother-and-child, his dominant theme--perhaps because he lost his own mother at such a young age.

Beautifully illustrated, this catalog will stand as a lasting tribute to the great Dumile. The exhibition was held at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, January 31-April 10, 2005, the Oliewenhuis Art Museum, May 17-June 17, 2005, and the South African National Gallery, August 13-November 4, 2005.

Reviewed by Gavin Younge in De arte (Pretoria) 78, 2008, pages 62-64. Exhibition reviewed by Mary Corrigall in Art South Africa (Cape Town) 6 (2) summer 2007, page 88.

The late Dumile Feni is one of South Africa's most prominent apartheid-era artists. His life story epitomizes the struggle, loss, and resilience of black South African artists of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Heralded as a leading "township artist," he chose exile which turned out to be a life of increasing disappointment and decline. This catalog anticipates the major retrospective exhibition of 2005 (see Dumile Feni retrospective). It is a selling exhibition directed to South African institutions, offering them works of art made after Dumile left South Africa in 1968 until his death in 1991. Thirty-one drawings are featured, though there are none later than 1985.

Exhibition reviewed by Sipho Mdanda in Art South Africa (Cape Town) 3 (2) summer 2004, page 66.

Living in Johannesburg, however, he faced harassment by the police and was ordered to return to his designated ‘homeland.’ With Ainslie and others’ help, Feni was able to leave the country for London where he held a successful solo show and also participated in group shows. In the late 1970s he moved to the United States where he taught briefly, battled with a drug problem, and continued to produce and show his work.

The second section is a discussion of how various writers and audiences have made sense of Feni and his work, and of new lines of investigation or approaches that could help to give a fuller picture of his life and work. The last section is an interesting way of exploring an enigmatic figure in South African art history--bringing together a variety of sometimes conflicting opinions and impressions. These accounts give a sense of the personality and artist Dumile Feni, without trying to pin down who he really was in one definitive account.

Dylan Lewis is a sculptor who lives in Stellenbosch, South Africa. He often works is metal—bronze and steel—creating dramatic figures. His early work depicted animals from the area surrounding his home, primarily wild cats—cheetahs, leopards, and lions—in a variety of motions, stalking and pursuing prey. Later he broadened his repertoire to include other animals, like birds, antelopes and buffaloes. His more recent work incorporates humans into animal scenes—“the human interface with the wild”—and occasionally focuses exclusively on human subjects. The present volume showcases this latest trend, accompanied by his own preliminary sketches, photographs by Gerda Genis and literary quotations.

Lewis is well-known as a wildlife sculptor in South Africa and beyond. His sculptures can be found throughout South Africa in botanical gardens, on golf courses, and in the foyers of sophisticated buildings. His work has been exhibited in the U.K., Europe and the U.S.

Dylan Lewis’ bronze and clay sculptures of felines are “forces of nature,” untamed, sinewy, muscular, contorted, writhing, fragmentary. So, too, his figurative sculptures of humans, the female form, capture the body in motion, stretching, leaning, bending. Always in motion. This catalog features a wide range of these human-animals sculptures.

Togolese artist El Loko ends this retrospective exhibition covering 1984 to 2004 with a disturbing series of works entitled “Gotteskinder” (God’s children), which depict mayhem, violence, beating, and strangulations. So different from his more serene “Kosmische Lettern” (cosmic letters) series of a decade earlier. And all this is a long way from textile design, which was El Loko’s starting point in the arts, back in Accra in the late 1960s. He came to Germany in 1971 to study textile design and had the good fortune to work with Joseph Beuys, which led him in a wholly new direction. He has remained in Germany ever since. Today El Loko works in several media - - painting, printmaking, mixed media, sculpture, installations, and even performance art. This catalog includes essays by Ralf Kulschewskij, Tobias Wendl, Helga Gausling and others. Sixty-five color plates.

Elias Sime is a unique artist. This is Elias’ first major catalog, published for the Elias Sime: Tightrope exhibition, by the Wellin Museum of Art, Hamilton College.

Catalog of an exhibition held at Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art, Clinton, September 7 - December 8, 2019; Akron Art Museum, Akron, February 29 - May 24, 2020; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, June 11 - September 13, 2020; Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, October 24, 2020 - February 21, 2021.

Meski Assequed, a curator and anthropologist, collaborates with Elias. They have worked together for many years. They have developed the Zoma Museum, an ecological museum, and the Zoma Contemporary Art Center, in Addis Ababa.

In the 1990s Elias started using found objects, such as yarn, textiles, buttons, and bottlecaps. He also uses straw and mud. In the 2000s he started collecting old computer motherboards, keyboards, mobile phones, and electrical color wire.

Contents: Director's foreword and acknowledgments / Tracy L. Adler -- Introduction / Tracy L. Adler -- Art, life, and emotion : Elias Sime's affective objects / Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi -- Personal touch : vital materialism in the work of Elias Sime / Karen E. Milbourne -- Tightrope : plates -- Interview with Elias Sime and Meskerem assegued / Tracy L. Adler -- Exhibition history -- Selected bibliography -- Checklist of the exhibition.

Sime's brightly colored sculptural tableaus feature found objects including thread, buttons, electrical wires, and computer detritus. This book highlights the artist's work from the last decade, much of which comprises the series entitled "Tightrope." Repurposing salvaged electronic components, such as circuits and keyboards, Sime incorporates the refuse that are the byproducts of technological advancement, and points to the urgency of sustainability. The resulting abstractions reference landscape and the figure as well as traditional Ethiopian textiles. "Tightrope" refers to the precarious balance between the progress technology has made possible and its detrimental impact on the environment.

Elimo Njau is the centerpiece of this book about the murals in the Saint James and All Martyrs Cathedral in Murang’a (formerly Fort Hall), Kenya. Painted in 1959 as a memorial to the martyrs killed during the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, these five murals depict the Nativity, Baptism, The Last Supper, Agony in the Garden, and Crucifixion. Three additional chapters focus on the artist, Njau, and his long career, notably his art center in Nairobi, Paa Ya Paa. Born in Tanzania in 1932, Njau studied art at Makerere University in Uganda, but he is best known for his contributions to the Kenyan art scene.

Erik Laubscher played a critical role “in changing a largely pictorial, conservative environment [of Western Cape] into an environment much more receptive to art in all its manifestations.” As artist, teacher, art administrator, and a longtime chairman of the South African Association of Arts in Western Cape, Laubscher helped gain acceptance for abstract art. It was rough in the beginning, and in order to support his family and his art, he worked as a paint salesman.

Published to coincide with “Erik Laubscher: a major retrospective exhibition,” (SMAC Art Gallery, Stellenbosch, 2009-2010) this catalog includes an iconographical discussion of Laubscher’s work by art historian Elza Miles and a contribution by the artist’s daughter Francesca Laubscher. In his interview with Baylon Sandi, Laubscher discusses his journey as an artist and those who influenced him. Prominent among these was Fernand Léger’s concepts of “organized intensity” and “ordered contrast” which stressed contrast, monumentality, color, and spatial organization.

To help readers understand Laubscher’s art, the author included a section titled “Abstraction in the work of Erik Laubscher,” listing terms and concepts relating to this art (chapter 13). Influenced by the School of Paris, and using an “acutely direct sense of observation,” Laubscher tries to produce and abstraction of the world, rather than a copy of it. He did so by combining forms and colors he constructed with the shapes of the world around him, especially landscapes. As he described it, his art is the pursuit of “the rhythm of the landscape and its space and light effects without using obvious perspective gimmicks.”

Lalla Essaydi’s photography expresses her concern for the condition of the female in Islamic culture with its confining gender boundaries and spaces. Focusing on the female body, she uses her personal life as shaped by traditional and modern experiences to penetrate the depth of the oppressive restrictions on women in Muslim societies. In her photographs she uses female friends and family models to show women in their “proper” place—the spaces around them that are saturated with Arabic calligraphy, a symbol of the ccripturally-sanctioned male dominance. In addition to filling the space around women, the oppressive script also invades the women’s clothing as well as their bodies in the form of henna decorations. Essaydi strives to find a gender identity that overcomes the burdens of traditional society and the demands of modernity. Essaydi’s emancipatory strive is further complicated by her attachment to the Islamic culture and the negative perception of this culture in the West.

Crossing boundaries includes essays by Stéphan Guégan, Mitra Abaspour, Maryam Ekhtiar and Kinsey Katchka, providing commentaries on the artistic philosophy of Lalla Essaydi and the cultural significance of her work. Biodata included (pp. 17-19).

Born in Paris in 1861, Etienne Dinet spent most of his life in his beloved Algeria. In 1913 he converted to Islam and took the name Nasreddine. Although he painted in the exoticizing Orientalist style, his subject matter indicated an observer who knew the country and its people intimately. Reviled by his French countrymen for his conversion, he ultimately became a revered figure to Algerians after Independence in the spirit of cultural recupération. Twenty of his paintings are reproduced.

Buntman looks at the social and ideological context of Ezrom Legae's paintings and sculptures in the decade of 1976 to 1986. The increasing turmoil in South Africa and, in particular, in the townships, is sharply reflected in Legae's work. Legae has always regarded himself as a township-based artist. Among the most visceral of his paintings is the "Chicken series."

Fathi Hassan, born in 1957 in Cairo, Egypt, is a prolific artist of Nubian heritage. In 1979 he emigrated to Italy and studied the arts. This book illustrates his paintings, drawings, and installations. Hassan uses Arabic calligraphy, paint, desert sand, textiles, and collages. He creates mixed media on paper, boards, and canvas. On paper he uses pastel & pencil and charcoal & crayon. He photographs, some of which are self-portraits.

Hassan’s themes and motives address his Nubian heritage—Black women madonnas; animals (elephants, camels) and historical revolution in North Africa and Nubia.

Rose Issa curated this exhibition at Leighton House Museum in London and edited this catalog. The contents: Fathi Hassan: signs of our times -- Questioning letters -- Mother Africa: The Sto male series -- Questioning honour: the Haram Aleikum series -- In conversation with Fathi Hassan.

Here are two other exhibition catalogs of Fathi Hassan, well-illustrated. One is in Milan, Italy in 2000, and the other one is in Williamstown, Massachusetts in 2014.

Bonito Oliva, Achille. Fathi Hassan. Milano, Charta, 2000. Text is English and Italian. 87 pp. N7385.H37 A4 2000 AFA. OCLC 44181707.

Hassan, Fathi, 1957- Fathi Hassan: migration of signs. Williamstown, Massachusetts: Williams College Museum of Art, 2014. 1 volume (unpaged), illus. (some color), bibl. refs. N7385.H37 A4 2014 AFA. OCLC 1010501332.

Mounir Fatmi, born 1970 in Tangiers, studied art in Rome and had a short career in advertising before turning to art. He works primarily in video, photography and installation, addressing contemporary political, religious and social issues. Surveillance, 9/11, the Taliban, the Kaaba and like subjects engage his creativity. Architecture is a recurring theme, and he continues to circle back to his roots in Morocco, though he now lives in Paris. In his installations, videos, and photographs, one encounters such objects as coaxial cables, computers, outdated electronics, yards of VHS tape, saw blades, and even skateboards. Even his early experience in advertising influences his photos and video work. This volume illustrates his work in sequential periods from 1995 to 2012.

This little dossier on Cameroonian painter Francis Mbella gathers past reviews, mini-essays, and self-reflections. Born in Duala in 1961, Mbella moved to Paris to study art, where he developed his personal painting style as a rich and textual colorist. His “Reflect de la couleur” elucidates his philosophy toward painting. Around a dozen of his paintings are reproduced in color.

The paintings of Francis Mbella featured in this volume are mixed media—tapioca, gouache, acrylic, felt-tip pen – and their subject matter is the Cameroon, his native country, and Paris, his adopted country. He experiments with color (earth tones) and form. Also includes testimonials by critics, journalists and well-wishers.

This is a revised, expanded and translated version of Mbella’s 1988 publication Short statements on my painting. In it Mbella expatiates on art, aesthetics and creativity. Not until page 100 does he talk about his own work and technique and intent. Writing on Mbella by others, previously published, are also included. Illustrated throughout with his paintings from 1987 to 1999.

German artist Fritz Krampe retreated to Namibia following the hardships of World War II, where he pursued his painting, eschewing mid-20th century trends and debates in the art world. He was a loner. Although he did not like being called an animal painter, he is best known for his wildlife paintings and drawings. His earliest sketches were made at the Berlin Zoo as a child. Krampe also executed sensitive portraits and occasionally, landscapes. On commission he composed murals and friezes, the best known being the Otjitambi Frieze in Namibia. This catalogue was pieced together 40 years after his untimely death, trampled by an elephant in India in 1966.

Gani Odutokun’s death in an automobile accident in 1995 sent shock waves through the Nigerian art community. A prominent colorist painter and teacher at Ahmadu Bello University, he is poignantly remembered in this catalog by a host of colleagues and fellow artists from Zaria and beyond. Most of the reminiscences are very personal. A few of the essays discuss his biography and his artwork. Although not really art historical, the tributes and contributions do provide a fuller picture of the man. Quite a number of his paintings and a few drawings and posters are illustrated (without attribution as to present ownership or location). Unfortunately, there is no bibliography on the artist. A serious study of the artist remains to be done.

Egyptian women of Gazbia Sirry’s generation did not become artists, but she declared her independence and did just that. Her whole life has been Art. Born in 1925 in Cairo, Sirry had formal art training in Egypt and abroad. As an artist she matured early in her career and has been brilliantly successful and active ever since. Color has always been a constant and critical element in her painting. Her style, however, has evolved considerably, as is clear by the large selection of works presented chronologically in this catalog. Several essays, appreciations, and excerpts from previously published articles offer a wide range of views on this much-fêted artist.

Bernard Gcwensa was already carving walking sticks and spoons when Father Edwin Kinch commissioned a statue of the Virgin Mary for the Catholic mission church at Hlabisa. So began a lifetime association and a new career for Gcwensa as a sculptor of religious art. This was in 1953, seven years before young Ruben Xulu joined him as apprentice. (See below).

The story of Gcwensa's life, filled with success and tragedy, is told by Cormick, herself an artist. Included is a complete, if not exhaustive, catalog of sculptural works commissioned for churches in Natal and elsewhere in South Africa. They include free-standing sculpture, biblical scenes, stations of the cross, crucifixes and panel reliefs.

Reviewed by J. P. van der Watt in De arte (Pretoria) 49, Julie 1994, page 48.

Gebre Kristos Desta, one of Ethiopia's most revered modern artists, is not well known internationally except in Germany where he studied art in Cologne, in Ethiopian circles and in the hearts and minds of his students. He died relatively young at age 50, a refugee from the Derg, Ethiopia's socialist reguine, in Lawton, Oklahoma.

In the 1960s and 1970s before he fell afoul of the Derg, Gebre Kristos Desta flourished and was feted. The newness of his modernist paintings were not fully appreciated in tradition-bound Ethiopia, but he enjoyed the patronage of Emperor Haile Selassie and is now credited with introducing Modernism to Ethiopia. When Gebre Kristos Desta fled Ethiopia, he sought refuge in Germany but was refused. Now many years later Germany is seeking to make amends. A new museum in Addis Ababa funded by the German government is deovted to Gebre Kristos Desta with its collection comprised of his paintings repatriated from Germany where they had been in storage at the Museum für Völkerkunde Munich.

Contents: Gebre Kristos Desta, Ethiopia's painter and poet extraordinaire: a biography / Achamyeleh Debela -- State and society in Ethiopia (1930's to 1970's): contextualising Gebre Kristos Desta / Shiferaw Bekele -- Gebre Kristos--through the eyes of friends and relatives / Rita Pankhurst -- Gebre Kristos Desta reflected by his former students / Elisabeth Biasio -- German expressionism and the art of Gebre Kristos Desta / Elizabeth W. Giorgis -- Notes from Gebre Kristos' Cologne years / Yohannes Gedamu -- Gebre Kristos Desta: the painter's eye, the poet's hand / Heran Sereke-Brhan -- Catalogue of paintings by Gebre Kristos Desta.

This book explores how the life and work of South African artist Kendell Geers can be seen to constitute a living archive of political turmoil, protest against injustice, and the effects of globalization. In his provocative, often humorous, but always compelling work, Kendell Geers employs various media such as installation, drawing, video, performance, and photography. For two decades his art has been closely linked to the political and cultural environments of his home--whether in South Africa or Europe. This volume explores in particular the trajectories of two decade-long periods. The first, a political phase, runs from 1988 to 2000, during which time Geers explored the moral and ethical contradictions of apartheid. By appropriating historical events and ideas, he focused on questions of the relationship between individual and society. The second period was initiated by Geers's move to Brussels in 2000. This European period is characterized by a poetic aesthetic as Geers transferred his artistic practice into a postcolonial and increasingly global context, exploring themes such as terrorism, spirituality, and mortality. This volume features a number of essays addressing aspects of Geers's work as well as an interview with the artist."— from the publisher's website.

Contents: Foreword / Okwui Enwezor -- Kendell Geers (1988-2012) / Clive Kellner -- The perversity of my birth: the birth of my perversity / Kendell Geers -- Kendell Geers: a proletarian gnosis / Nicolas Bourriaud -- On the aesthetic and political language of art: a conversation between Kendell Geers and William Kentridge / Moderated by Okwui Enwezor -- On the political in Kendell Geers' early work, 1988-2000 / Katerina Gregos -- (With your) back to the wall: the murals of Kendall Geers / Anitra Nettleton -- Kendell Geers, or the denial of the evident / Laurent Devèze.

George Lilanga, Makonde artist, switched from sculpting to painting - - a betrayal, according to some of his fellow artists, to the Makonde sculpture tradition. But Lilanga was unfazed. Painting offered him more scope and flexibility and resulted in prolific output. His paintings pop with Makonde-style shetani figures crowded into every corner of the surface. Disabled by diabetes, Lilanga remained active until his death in 2005. In the later years, he reverted to sculpting the same grotesque shetani figures but coloring them in high-gloss paints. Lilanga exhibited extensively in Tanzania and abroad, including several high profile exhibitions.

Enrico Mascelloni and Sarenco, friends and patrons of the artist, put together this catalog, which includes a conversation with Lilanga about his life and inspirations. The works illustrated are mainly from 1997 to the present, including the high-gloss sculptures. There is also a series of ink on goat-skin paintings dating to 1975. So this is not a complete representation of his long career.

Italians seem to have an affinity for the exuberant, cartoonish work of George Lilanga. Many of his patrons are Italian—followed by the Japanese. Works from several private Italian collections contribute to this retrospective exhibition of his entire career 1971 to his death in 2005. Initially apprenticed as a sculptor in rural southern Tanzania, Lilanga moved to Dar es Salaam in 1971 where he came under the influence of the Tingatinga painters. He switched to painting and transferred his shetani figures to two-dimensional formats. Instead of one or two figures, his canvasses are populated with lots of big-eared, large-mouth, two-fingered creatures.

His oeuvre was more varied than might imagined in that he executed batiks, etchings, ink drawings, goatskin paintings as well as the square board acrylic paintings typical of the Tingatinga painters. Late in life, he reverted to sculpting shetani figures, but they were updated in imagery and bright colors.

The Hamburg Mawingu Collection (HMC) focuses exclusively on Makonde art. All the major and many of the minor Makonde artists are represented. George Lilanga, who is perhaps the most prominent of these, assisted his German patrons in documenting their collection of his works. This catalog (which the author refers to as a "work directory") was not complete at the time Lilanga died in 2005, but some of his trenchant observations and explanations of his work are included. The catalog comprises mainly his later Makonde-style figurative sculptures, painted in bright, high-gloss colors. The human figures that populate his paintings -- with their large ears, open mouths, three-toed feet -- now appear in 3-D. Traditional wrappers and loincloths are replaced by modern garb. Lilanga never lost his sharp observant eye, even as his health failed. These sculptures plus a few paintings are arranged thematically -- the world of spirits, school and education, sports, sickness and health, etc.

This book is the story of South African painter George Pemba and also a guide to looking at art, written for middle school students and up. Using the context of Pemba’s life and art, the reader is guided through the biography and shown paintings that parallel the political changes in South Africa and the evolution of Pemba’s work. The commentary on individual paintings invites looking closely and asks questions (such as why did George include pictures of the crucifixion of Christ in shebeen paintings). The author, Barry Feinberg, is a long-time friend of Pemba’s who for more than twenty years sent money covertly to Pemba that allowed the artist to keep painting.

This film documents the life and career of George Pemba through the artist’s own on screen commentary and reflections. The camera views him painting in his studio and outdoors, shows his paintings, and records perspectives by colleagues and supporters. George Pemba was a survivor, living most of his life on the edge of poverty, but pursuing his painting against all odds. Although not overtly political by nature or in his work, Pemba’s paintings are a kind of quiet protest against apartheid and at the same time are a celebration of everyday life. His style is very painterly and impressionistic. His portraits are very sensitive and poignant. It was only in the 1990s with apartheid crumbling that this unsung artist began to be more widely recognized and honored.

George Pemba became a painter "against all odds." He began painting as a child copying photographs using a watercolor set given to him by his father. And he has continued to paint all his life, convinced from an early age that this was his true calling. Though not without mentors at various periods in his life, Pemba has had to struggle to find the spare time and the resources to pursue his life as a painter.

Pemba is best known for his portraits, which are sympathetic yet full of character. His scenes of life in the townships and in rural areas are windows on his own long life. Pemba was never openly political, but like other black South Africans, he was acutely aware of the injustices of apartheid and some of his paintings capture those injustices and miseries. But just as many capture the ordinary joys and sorrows of everyday existence. One of his most poignant paintings is the autobiographical 1930 watercolor "The Funeral" depicting himself in the donkey-drawn hearse of his father, followed by mourners.

Huddleson's story of George Pemba is biographical rather than art historical. The artist cooperated freely with the writer, sharing his diaries and family photographs and recollections. A portfolio of paintings presented chronologically reveal the development and maturation of this outstanding pioneer artist.

Reviewed by Annette Loubser in Artreach(Grahamstown, SA) 3 (1) autumn 1998, page 8.

George Pemba (1912-2001) was the one who stayed at home. A contemporary of Gerard Sekoto (1913-1993), Pemba has been unfairly cast in the shadow of the heroic exile Sekoto. Pemba's life as an artist has been a steady, slow progress, largely unheralded until a 1991 exhibition "introduced" this elderly painter to an uninformed public.

Pemba has been painting since childhood, spent in and around Port Elizabeth. His forte is portraiture and his depictions of township life are albums of the daily lives of the masses. In fact, it was Sekoto who urged Pemba to move away from portraits to depictions of township life and from watercolors to oils -- advice that Pemba heeded. In this catalog, Barry Feinberg provides a biographical essay on Pemba, and Jacqueline Nolte, who is writing a book on Pemba, shares her insights in an essay on "Sources and style in the oil paintings of George Milwa Mnyaluza Pemba." Clearly, Pemba is an artist who deserves more attention. This first retrospective exhibition of 123 works opens the way to that discovery. This catalog includes numerous illustrations, several in color, and photographs of Pemba at various periods in his life.

Reviewed by Peter Limb in African book publishing record (Oxford) 24 (3) 1998, page 193.

In the 18th-century Venetian villa, home of the Querini family’s Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Georges Adéagbo created one of his site-specific installations. Amidst the grandeur of terrazzo floors, high-ceilings and marble wainscoating, Adéagbo scattered his objets trouvé from markets in Venice, Berlin and his hometown of Cotonou, as well as works commissioned by his favorite Benin artists. To this assemblage he adds his handwritten comments, labels if you will. Adéagbo is repositioning Venice to the periphery. His Benin moves to the center.

This book documents the first six years of Georges Adéagbo’s creative works, or his “methodological fields,” as they are referred to. Adéagbo, from Bénin, rewrites history in his assemblages that have neither center nor beginning and end. He illustrates a colonial history of relationships between western hegemony and Africa. Commentary on Adéagbo’s installations from 1994 to 2001 are offered by several scholars and critics along with an interview with the artist.

Reviewed by Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie, "Impossible cities, improbably artists: encounters with Africa at the edges of memory," Art journal (New York) 63 (4) winter 2004, pages 137-140.

The story of Egyptian artist Georges Bahgory is told with his own pen and brush in poetic vignettes and expressive paintings

Getachew Yossef, Ethiopian artist and Rastafarian, has followed an unusual path and is not as well known internationally as his artistic contemporaries. Born in Dessie in 1957, he schooled in Addis Ababa—his father worked for Prince Asfa Wossen, son of Haile Selassie, so Getachew lived in the palace. He studied at the art school in Addis and later in Leipzig. Racist East Germany was not a welcoming experience for an African in the 1980s, but it led him to reflect on his African roots. Why is there so much misery and warfare on a continent with beautiful landscapes and warm sun? While in East Germany he learned about Rastafarianism, listened to Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, and found consolation in its rejection of ‘Babylon.’ And he adopted dreadlocks.

His paintings depict both horrific references to the Derg era as well as serene, peaceful images—the sun, mother & child, horses. Elisabeth Biasio walks us through the changing themes and imagery of his painting. Getachew is also a sculptor; he was commissioned to do public monuments, notably the “African Union” and “China-Africa Forum” in Addis Ababa. He has also made naturalistic bronze sculptures of animals and people as well as religious ones, such as “Archangel Gabriel.” He still teaches at the School of Fine Art in Addis and remains active in his own art practice. Elisabeth Biasio is to be credited with giving this artist the visibility he deserves. She first interviewed him in 1993 and again 2009.

Ghada Amer's art explores female identity through the media of cutting and embroidery, sewing and threading. She transforms action painting, a masculine art form, into "action threading" with subtle repetitions and layering. Her work speaks to the global transmission of images and icons of popular culture, including erotic ones.

This is the catalog of a solo exhibition of Ghada Amer, held at the MACRO, Museo d'arte contemporanea Roma, Rome, Italy, May 25-September 30, 2007. Contents include: Autoricamo = Selfembroidery / by Germano Celant -- Ghada Amer / by Danilo Eccher -- Liquid girls / by Teresa Macrì -- Navigare in territorio "marcato", ovvero come vivere per sempre felici e contenti = Navtgating marked territory; or, how to live happily ever after / by Elizabeth Janus -- Biografia / by Costanza Paissan.

Ghada Amer is strongly influenced by the French feminist Hélène Cixous, who demanded that women speak for themselves - - écriture féminine -- in defiance of male oppression. Amer’s œuvre for the last two decades resonates in response to this feminist clarion call. In an interview in this volume Amer elaborates on how this feminist theory manifests itself in her work. The monograph presents chronologically Amer’s paintings, drawings, and prints, from the early 1990s to 2010. The artist has also created a series of outdoor installations called “Garden,” and her sculptures transform her two-dimensional embroidery and threaded work into three-dimensions. This multi-faceted artist does performance and videos and since 2000 has collaborated with Reza Farkhondeh. Well-illustrated monograph documenting this mid-career artist.

Gladys Mgudlandlu was an art teacher who also had a remarkably successful career as a painter, despite the severe limitations of being black in South Africa under apartheid. Primarily self-taught -- her grandmother showed her mural painting in the Fingo tradition -- Mgudlandlu developed an expressionistic, naive style of painting using broad strokes and bold colors. She began exhibiting her work in the early 1960s and received wide press coverage which was unusual for a black woman at that time. Her work was much in demand, perhaps because of its naive style (like Grandma Moses to whom she was compared). Landscapes, cityscapes, Xhosa traditional life, animals, especially birds, are her common subject matter. Her personal life was less glamorous, always something of a struggle, living in a cottage in Guguletu township outside of Cape Town. Because she had to teach during the day, she painted at night always by paraffin lamp, which she preferred to electric light -- hence, her nickname Nomfanekiso, “she who paints at night.” Following a car accident in 1971, she stopped painting and died in poverty in 1979.

Reviewed by Marion Arnold in De Arte (Pretoria) no. 69, 2004, pages 104-106.

In 1938 Gregoire Boonzaier and like-minded artists formed the New Group as a means of elevating art practice and appreciation in parochial South Africa. Invigorated by his art studies in England and his travels on the continent, Boonzaier had returned to South Africa hoping to inject some quality and vigor into the local art scene. As a young man, before his formal training, Boonzaier had already had some success as a painter, encouraged by his stern and domineering father (from whom he had to eventually break away). Boonzaier’s first solo exhibition was in 1925 at the age of 15. By the time the New Group broke up in 1953, Boonzaier was quite an accomplished and collectible painter. He typically painted impressionistic landscapes, rural scenes, or cityscapes, including now much sought after street scenes of District Six and the Malay Quarter of Cape Town. But he also did still lifes and portraits (many self-portraits). By age 80 (when this book was published), Boonzaier was still active and now a venerable part of the South African art establishment.

An early biography of South African artist Gregoire Boonzaier – the preceding entry – this study traces his youth and career as painter up to 1964. It includes more than ninety of his paintings, through most are reproduced in black-&-white. Boonzaier’s father was a cartoonist and artist who encouraged his son but was domineering and controlling. Eventually Gregoire had to strike out on his own, despite the rift it caused. Gregoire Boonzaire was part of the New Group in the late 1930s and 1940s, but he developed his own painting style, favoring landscapes for which he became known.

Guy Karangwa Omega is a very simple, straight-forward man, who approaches painting in the same way. Born in Rwanda in 1952, Karangwa is mainly self-taught (though he took a few art courses) and has been painting since the early 1970s. By his own admission, he had not been exposed to much art, since he has not traveled outside the region and since the art scene in Kigali is tiny. His works are “ethnographic” narratives, depicting village scenes, herding cattle, local markets, dances, masks - - a pastoral painter. Like all Rwandans, Karangwa was swept up in the genocide of 1994 and narrowly escaped death. It is not something he talks about now, but he did create one painting, Scène folle, which is his statement on the madness of these atrocities. Karangwa is not a political artist, but this painting is not political; it is a memorial of the war, an African Guernica.

Cape Town artist Randy Hartzenburg lived through the apartheid era in South Africa, and his work is suffused with imagery that speaks to the enforced separation of peoples. In this film, he talks about six works which metaphorically address dislocation, insecurity, vulnerability, loss, unfulfilled lives. Hartzenburg is a painter, a printmaker and an installation artist. Each of these media is represented in the works shown and talked about here: “Unplugged,” “Lock and Handle,” “Shadow on the House,” “In the Land of the Blind, the One-eyed Man is King,” “Workers,” and “Salt and Time.” The last was an installation in an exhibition on Robben Island.

Fatima Hassan el Farouj (1945-2010) is a self-taught artist, whose first exhibition was in 1965. She saturates her paintings with colors and geometric designs, filling the canvases. Her primary subjects are women, groups of women, posed and looking toward the viewer. The settings are rites and ceremonies, musicians, bazaars, cuisine and feasting. This short yet concise biography of the artists includes tributes by those who knew her and a nice selection of her art works.

Kay Hassan’s mid-career exhibition in 2008 introduces new large-scale installations, digital prints, and video art along with his better known paper constructions. Born and bred in Johannesburg, Hassan speaks to the urban condition, the world of migrants to the city, and the persistence of the underclass in South Africa today. Catalog includes essays by Khwezi Gule, Ivor Powell, Themibinkosi Goniwe, and John Matshikiza, and an interview with the artist.

South African artist Kay Hassan received the DaimlerChrysler Award for South African Contemporary Art 2000. This catalog was published on that occasion to accompany an exhibition traveling in Germany and South Africa in 2000 and 2001.

Born in Alexandra township, Johannesburg, Kay Hassan grew up in his mother’s shebeen (illegal beer joint). The shebeens, the streets and byways of the township are bound up in his work as an artist. He received his first art training at Rorke’s Drift and later studied in France. He has also taught art in Johannesburg. Hassan’s early works on paper (prints and drawings) evolved into collage, which he calls his “paper constructions.” From 1997, he moved into installation work, bringing his two-dimensional creations into 3-D. But he continues to draw upon his earlier media by not abandoning printmaking or collage. This broad range of artistic creativity is all featured in this catalog.

David Koloane interviews Kay Hassan about his life and work. Martin Hentschel contributes an essay on Hassan, the artist. And Ralf-P. Seippel explains how and why Kay Hassan’s work was chosen for the DaimlerChrysler Award.

A journey through the Owl House is Emslie’s second book on Helen Martins (see next entry). More than two decades after Martins’ suicide, her Owl House is being preserved and her life re-examined. Here one is taken on a virtual tour of Martin’s unique and idiosyncratic house and yard, room by room, indoors and out. Martins began this long project after her parents’ deaths when she inherited the turn-of-the-century Karoo cottage. Her partner (and lover) in the enterprise was Johannes Hattingh, a married man with family. It was he who constructed the first cement animals and built much of the early Owl House bestiary. After he died in 1963, Martins continued creating, modifying and re-arranging her menageries inspired by some inner life of imagination. She did this with the help of Hattingh’s old helpers, Piet van der Merwe and Jonas Adams. Koos Malgas joined in as a new hand and was with her until the end.

Helen Martins, owner of the Owl House, lived an isolated life in the Karoo village of Nieu Bethesda until her suicide in 1976 at the age of seventy-eight. A cage of cement owls on the front veranda stands guard at the house and behind a high fence is a sculpture garden "peopled with a surging throng of pilgrims, ecstatic figures in acrobatic poses, elegant wide-skirted ladies and a bevy of alluring mermaids. A multitude of beasts and birds are all crammed together." Helen Martins visualized it all, while Koos Malgas, Piet van der Merwe, Jonas Adams and other temporary workers actually made and built the images.

Related articles include: "Moon lady of the Owl House: the strange legacy that Helen Martins left to a sleepy Cape dorp," People (South Africa) 16 (2) August 17-30 [1991?], pages 2-3; Madelein Van Biljon, "The Owl House: Karoo vision made form," South African arts calender = Suid-Afrikaanse kunskalender (Pretoria: South African Association of Arts) 16 (2) 1991, pages 16-17. There is also a brochure about Martins and The Owl House: Helen Elizabeth Martins, 1898-1976. [Nieu Bethesda, South Africa: The Owl House, 1991].

Helen Martins’ creativity falls within that dubious category of “outsider art.” In 1976 at the age of 78, she committed suicide by taking caustic soda, ending her life in the same house where she was born in South Africa’s remote Karoo. In the last thirty years of her increasingly darkening world, she and three helpers created The Owl House and Camel Yard, propelled by her inner visions and personal demons. Liberated by the deaths of her aged, invalid and difficult parents whom she cared for for sixteen years, she turned increasingly inward and lived as a recluse in her natal village of Nieu Bethesda, obsessed with creating “her world.”

Martins redecorated her plain flat-roofed Karoo cottage with bits of crushed glass embedded in the walls and with panes of colored glass admitting eery, oppressive light. Clutter, bric-a-brac, trinkets, and mirrors are everywhere. Ceilings are painted with sun bursts and other designs. Sculpted owls in unexpected places give the name The Owl House. Outside, the Camel Yard is populated by dozens of cement sculptures in a chaotic display of no discernable pattern or theme. Camels and owls abound, of course, but also Mona Lisas, lambs, peacocks, pyramids and mermaids. There are wise men on camels in a caravan making a pilgrimage to the Christ child or to Mecca, all facing east. (Athol Fugard’s play “The Road to Mecca” is based on the life of Helen Martins).

In this well-researched biography, Ross seeks to find meaning in the life and work of this unconventional woman. She looks back at family life, her two marriages, abortions, and other factors that shaped Helen Martins. She looks at the subjects and symbols in Helen Martins’ bestiary and celestial sculpture garden and attempts some psychological interpretation. She provides context with comparisons to other “outsider” South African artists, including Noria Mabasa, Jackson Hlungwani, Sibusiso Mbhele and Nukian Mabusa.

Henry Munyaradzi, like many of Zimbabwe's stone sculptors, came by chance to his art. At Tengenenge Sculpture Community where he took up sculpting in 1967, Henry developed his distinctive geometric style. Roy Guthrie credits Tom Blomefield with encouraging and supporting Henry's career, which has moved along a trajectory of success. Henry's sculptures are exhibited and collected internationally. Until the end of his life, he continued to be active. Several of Henry's sculptures are reproduced in this book, though mainly undated.

Ibrahim el Salahi’s Life diary 2014-2016 is comprised of 82 drawings on sale by Sotheby’s, New York. This catalog illustrates all 82 of the works. It also gives us his autobiography—the progression of his career, but also his philosophy of art and his worldview (reprinted from Ibrahim el Salahi: a visionary Modernist), 2012. Previously published interviews with El Salahi by Ulli Beier are also included in this catalog.

Ibrahim El-Salahi: a visionary modernist, published as a companion to a traveling retrospective by the same name, chronicles the evolution of Sudanese artist Ibrahim El-Salahi's work over more than fifty years of sustained artistic productivity and intellectual engagement. El-Salahi's accomplishments offer profound possibilities for understanding African modernism in the context of modernity as a universal idea, one in which African art history is part and parcel of a global art history. The essays in A visionary modernist reconstruct the remarkable journey of El-Salahi, and, through a critical look at his artistic contributions, expand the narrative of modernism in the visual arts from comparative and international perspectives. Edited, and featuring a historical overview, by Salah M. Hassan, the book includes essays and interviews by well-known art historians and critics Sarah Adams, Ulli Beier, Iftikhar Dadi, Hassan Musa, and Chika Okeke-Agulu, as well as special texts by El-Salahi himself. – from publisher's website.

Reviewed by W. Ian Bourland in African arts (Los Angeles) 47 (1) spring 2014, pages 94-95. The exhibition was reviewd by Roger Atwood in Art news (New York) October 2013, page 117.

Ibrahim El-Salahi has lived in Oxford, England since 1998. In 2018, the Ashmolean Museum rightly celebrates this artist with a retrospective exhibition. Although his early art work is featured, his more recent Tree series, Flamenco Dancers series, and Pain Relief Drawings are the centerpieces of the exhibition and this catalog. El-Salahi’s interview lets us hear his own voice in his stories, experiences, and inspirations. “From Omdurman to Oxford” by curator Lena Fritsch is the main essay on El-Salahi’s long, winding path—followed by the chronology of his career. This is an excellent catalog.

Content: Director's foreword -- Introduction --From Omdurman to Oxford -- In conversation with Ibrahim El-Salahi --Ancient Sudan in the Ashmolean Museum / Liam McNamara -- Ibrahim El-Salahi and the Sudanese community in Oxford / Nagar Eltahir -- Chronology / Federica Gigante -- Curator's acknowledgements.

Nigerian photographer J. D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere is best known for his photographs of Nigerian women’s hairstyles and head-ties, but his repertoire is much broader than that. It encompasses urban architecture and portraits, which speak to Nigerian modernity. A rich selection of Ojeikere’s photography is included in this catalog.

Ojeikere is interviewed by Don Barber and Jide Adeniyi-Jones. Essays by Ikem Stanley Okoye, Antawan I. Byrd, and Bisi Silva offer commentaries and analysis of his oeuvre. Erin Haney’s essay on early Nigerian photographers is especially enlightening. A chronicle of his life, exhibition history, and bibliography fills out this comprehensive work.

Jackson Hlungwani, the Tsonga visionary, mystic and healer, is a sculptor of enormous creativity and originality. He has been discovered by the art world in South Africa, and his work is sold and exhibited widely. But Hlungwani remains something of a mystery and continues to live and carry on his work and ministries in his rural homeland of Gazankulu, where he built New Jerusalem, an architectural and sculptural complex on an acropolis near his village. Created out of an ancient zimbabwe (ruin), it is an assemblage of carved sticks reaching toward the sky. Hlungwani's sculpture is heavy with Christian themes and icons, but is also very humanistic.

This truly original artist was given a retrospective exhibition in 1989 curated by Ricky Burnett, who in 1985 did the milestone "Tributaries" exhibition. Included in the accompanying catalog are essays by Théo Schneider, Lionel Abrahams, Rayda Becker, Aggrey Klaaste, Peter Rich, and Ricky Burnett.

Exhibition and catalog reviewed by Elizabeth L. Rankin, "Jerusalem in Johannesburg," South African journal of art and architectural history (Pretoria) 1 (2): 75-83, May 1990. Exhibition reviewed by Ivor Powell, "Gazankulu's wounded shaman sculpts his strange temples," Weekly mail (Johannesburg) November 3-9, 1989, page 22; "Towering exhibitions," Sowetan (Soweto) November 27, 1989. See also Wilma Cruise's letter to the editor in De arte (Pretoria) 41, April 1990, page 73.

Jaffary Aussi, one of the more innovative among the younger generation of Tingatinga artists, has carried on the Tingatinga tradition with his own distinctive stylistic interpretations and experiments in color and perspective of distortion. Yet he remains firmly rooted in the original Tingatinga sensibility. Animals predominate in his paintings as they do in all Tingatinga paintings. In fact, it is the animal-man relationship that is one of the hallmarks of this informal school of painting founded (almost by chance) by Edward Saidi Tingatinga in Dar es Salaam in the late 1960s. Tingatinga and his followers are mainly Makua, and it is argued here that Makuan folklore and legends form a thematic base for the Tingatinga paintings, even amongst younger adherents, who are urban born and bred. Being related by blood ties and working closely together, Tingatinga painting is "family art."

The works of Jaffary Aussi constitute the centerpiece of this second Tingatinga book by this Japanese publisher. Yamamoto introduces the artist, and Shiraishi in his essay "Portraits of coexistence" elucidates the larger phenomenon of the Tingatinga school and, in particular, its founder E. S. Tingatinga (1937-1972).

An unsung hero of East African art, Jak Katarikawe received overdue recognition with this catalog accompanying a retrospective exhibition in Frankfurt-am-Main in 2001. Joanna Agthe and Elsbeth Court, who have known Jak for many years, attempt a biography (their phrasing) of this Ugandan painter from his childhood in Kigezi to his days at Makerere University as an irregular trainee to his later years in Nairobi. Although Jak is well known in Nairobi and has had some international exhibitions, the full measure of his accomplishment is a revelation. His paintings always have stories attached that the authors tease out and interweave with his own life story. Jak’s long-horned cows and doe-eyed elephants are his signature painting themes, but as this catalog reveals, his corpus is much wider than that. Mentors have been critically important to the illiterate Jak Katarikawe throughout his career, and their interventions form part of the larger story: Ruth Schaffner (director of Gallery Watatu in Nairobi), David Cook, Sam Ntiro, and Michael Adams, at Makerere, Jochen Schneider, his great patron. Beautifully illustrated, the catalog arranges his paintings by theme: portraits, his homeland, marraige and family, festivals, the bush, sex and prostitution, andimals and folklore.

World-class sculptor Jane Alexander won this 2002 DaimlerChrysler Award for South African Sculpture. From the year she finished college in 1982, her work has stood out, visually, viscerally, in-your-face, painful, poignant. The “Butcher Boys” (1985-1986), half-man, half-animal mutants, are representative of her corpus in the “mute storytelling manner.” Addressing the world around her, Alexander ultimately connects with universal and global themes of the human condition.

Akiko Miki, one of the DaimlerChrysler jury, shares personal views on the character and strength of Alexander’s art.

Reviewed by Ivor Powell in Art South Africa (Cape Town) 1 (1) spring 2002, page 61.

Jean Welz (1900-1975) was born in Salzburg, Austria, and at the age of 37 emigrated to South Africa. During his remarkable life he worked as architect, artist and art teacher, coping with ill health and resourcefully meeting the challenges of life in a new country to become a highly esteemed artist.

In this first ever monograph on Jean Welz, Elza Miles explores his world. She discusses his life in Europe and thereafter in South Africa, traces his career change from architect to artist, and deals with his contributions as artist and art teacher. Through Welz’s story she gives readers access to his varied artworks and locates his œuvre in the context of South African art. Using his paintings and drawings, many of which were sold directly from his studio, and working with the full co-operation of Welz’s family, she brings the person and the artist to life.

Welz studied architecture in Vienna, Austria. In 1925 he settled in Paris where he began his professional career. Apart from assisting Adolf Loos, he had contact with Le Corbusier and his associates and was influenced by the Purist aesthetics advocated by Le Corbusier. Although Paris provided intellectual stimulation, Welz was ever conscious of the threat Fascism posed to free expression. In 1937 Welz, his wife, Danish journalist Inger Christensen, and young son moved to South Africa. He worked as an architectural draughtsman in Johannesburg, and interrelated regularly with collegues at the Department of Architecture at the University of the Witwatersrand. After he was diagnosed as suffering from tuberculosis, he recuperated at the Springkell Sanatorium, Modderfontein, where he began drawing the landscape around him in pen and ink. These artworks were first exhibited in Johannesburg in 1940.

The first Welz family moved to the Little Karoo in 1940. It was here that Welz met Hugo Naudé and founded the Art Centre in Worchester. His third career was launched here - - while developing his particular techniques of working in pastel, charcoal and oil paint, he also dedicated himself to teaching art.

In his still lifes, landscapes, portraits and nude studies Welz transformed seemingly usual subject matter to expose us, the viewers, to his poetic vision. In The World of Jean Welz, Elza Miles gives us insight into this artist’s continual exploration of nature, and the ‘musical’ works which he created. These are testimony to his reputation in the world of art.

Jellal Ben Abdallah, born in 1921, has been painting all his adult life. His first exhibition was in 1939. Though known as a painter, he has also designed the interiors of buildings and done mosaics and murals. This book focuses on his paintings, including the minatures for which he is justly famous. His paintings are nostalgic, serene, capturing scenes from an earlier Tunisia. Figurative paintings of women predominate: cool interiors, the female inner sanctum, women in seclusion, grooming, doing domestic activities, playing musical instruments. Harmoniously composed, his paintings are rich with patterned decoration and costume. The outside landscape is only glimpsed through an open window or archway.

Although this book is designated a second edition, it would seem to be only a reprint of the original 1983 edition, as no new material has been added.

Jimoh Buraimoh, one of the first generation of Oshogbo artists, regales the readers with his childhood and formative peripatetic years, his time with Duro Ladipo’s theater company (where he served as lighting technician), the move to the visual arts and the now famous Oshogbo workshops. Best known for his bead paintings, Jimoh Buraimoh has also designed and created mosaic murals for public buildings in Nigeria and most recently for the city of Atlanta, Georgia. In one chapter, he describes his creative process and techniques.

Jimoh Buraimoh’s autobiography is based on a series of interviews with Yomi Durotoye, a Nigerian academic, art collector, and friend. Through editing and re-working of text, some of Buraimoh’s true voice is lost and there are repetitions, but on the whole it is a complete, well-rounded exposition of “my life and arts.”

Reviewed by Marcilene Keeling Wittmer in African book publishing record (Oxford) 27 (3) 2001, pages 197-198.

Jo Ractliffe is a practicing artist, working with photo-based media, video and installation. Born in Cape Town, she completed her art degrees at the University of Cape Town, and has taught at universities in South Africa. At present she is on faculty at the University of Witwatersrand. In 1999 she won the prestigious Vita Art award. Among the art projects of Ractliffe’s discussed in this book are Nadir, Shooting Diana, Guess Who Loves You; End of Time.

Jodi Bieber’s Between dogs and wolves is a collection of black and white photographs of children in South Africa who have very little and it seems, even less to look forward to. These are the children who are the poorest and most marginalized of society, surrounded by the threat of violence, drugs and prostitution. They often succumb to their environment. Like the blacks, the whites of the lowest strata of society are also addicted to drugs and surrounded by violence that they cannot escape. Bieber has chosen the photographs to depict the dire state of life of the poorest and most ignored children to illustrate that although as a country South Africa has achieved drastic change politically, it is still struggling to meet the needs of its most vulnerable.

Bieber grew up in middle class privilege with little interaction with her black countrymen. Working as a trainee for a newspaper, she was witness to history in the making. The political changing of the guard wrought violent upheavals with the deaths of many of her own friends and colleagues. Atthis time she met a nineteen year old white lower class Afrikaans boy whose life she followed and documented. Despite his life of drugs, poverty, gangs and sex, she found that there is good in even what society has rejected as the worst.

Reviewed by Rory Bester in Art South Africa (Cape Town) 5 (2) summer 2006, page 89.

South African photographer Jodi Bieber’s Between darkness and light: selected works: South Africa 1994-2010 is a mix of photographs from her previous book Between dogs and wolves (2006) and more recent ones. The first half of the book is of black-and-white photographs and the second half color. The black-and-white photographs are from Between dogs and wolves, Bieber’s book about the desperate lives of both black and white South Africans who must deal with poverty, drugs and violence while holding on to their survival and hope. Bieber’s color photographs are a much more joyous riot of color displaying the exuberance of a forward moving country and its people living their lives and doing their best to enjoy it.

In the middle of the book are photographs of South African women both black and white who are serving jail sentences for having killed their abusive husbands or boyfriends. Bieber has said that the composition of the photographs, with the women next to their beds (their only bit of personal space) is telling of whom these women are, outside of their crimes. These women prisoners are able to tell their stories. The last series of photographs, Soweto, 2009-2010, is a more positive view of life of black South Africans. In all her works, Bieber includes information about each of the photographs and names the individuals. This catalog was published for an exhibition held at the Fondazione Carispezia, La Spezia, Italy, December 2, 2017-March 4, 2018.

Joel Oswaggo, whose earlier paintings depict Luo customs, takes a more sardonic look at Luo contemporary religious practice, which is engulfed in the fervor of the independent Christian churches. Syncretic religions as the Legion of Marie Church or Mowar Roho Israel, with their mandatory white dress, self-proclaimed prophets, and faith healing, provide easy targets for the artist's visual commentary. In a series of eleven paintings, Oswaggo captures the evangelical scenes that are becoming more and more common in his native South Nyanza region of Kenya, where these churches are pulling people away from old customs and mores. The underlying theme in these paintings is the conflict of a new religion with old values. Women in particular are drawn as devotees to these churches and frequently end up putting church ahead of family. Oswaggo also provides a verbal commentary on each painting illustrated. Johanna Agthe's essay discusses these new churches in Kenya, and Josef Thiel places these local movements within a broader context of new African religious movements generally.

Reviewed by Norbert Aas in Tribus (Stuttgart) no. 41, 1992, page 199.

John Meyer, one of South Africa’s premier landscape painters, grew up in the Highveld with its beautiful mountains and fields and streams. He started his career as an illustrator before moving seriously to painting, specializing in realistic, elegant landscapes. He also did commissioned portraits, which were very successful commercially and artistically. He was commissioned to do a portrait of Vladimir Horowitz, which is on permanent view in Steinway Hall in New York. His representational style of landscape painting is rooted in European and American representational style, though his subject matter is South African. Being a realist painter is out of favor in international art circles today, yet his works still find avid collectors at home and overseas. John Meyer is a survivor, as artist and as cancer patient. In this attractive catalog, more than one hundred of his paintings are reproduced, along with essays that elucidate his life and work.

Reviewed by Brenda Danilowitz in African arts (Los Angeles) 29 (2) spring 1996, pages 94-96.

John Muafangejo is arguably Namibia's most famous artist. So it is appropriate that the Arts Association Heritage Trust (AAHT) of Namibia should have a collection of his prints, which are being officially transferred to the National Art Gallery of Namibia. This catalog showcases the AAHT collection of Muafangejo's prints, primarily linocuts, but also etchings. The four chapters address his life and art, his style and technique, and his enduring legacy with a final chapter on the AAHT and its role in preserving Namibia's artistic heritage.

This is the ultimate Muafangejo book, a catalogue raisonné, for which The African dream (preceding entry) was an introuduction. Orde Levinson is again at the helm, steering the course through the art corpus of Muafangejo. He offers an essay "John Muafangejo, Cubism and traditional African art" (pages 327-333). Other essays include: "The life and art of John Muafangejo," by Olga Levinson; "John Muafangejo," by British art critic Edward Lucie-Smith; "On not being a political artist," by Pat Gilmour; "The historical development of art in Namibia," by Olga Levinson; and "The Rorke's Drift Art and Craft Centre," by Steven Sack. Also included are a selection of interviews, statements and published conversations with Muafangejo.

Plus, there are the reproductions of Muafangejo's prints -- more than 300, a few in color. Public museum collections which own Muafangejo prints are listed (pages 384-385); his exhibition history is given (pages 387-394); and a complete Muafangejo bibliography is included (pages 397-420). In short, for anyone interested in the artist John Ndevisa Muafangejo, this is the vade mecum.

Reviewed by Brenda Danilowitz in African arts (Los Angeles) 29 (2) spring 1996, pages 94-96.

Angolan artist Jorge Gumbe studied at in Luanda, Havana, Stockholm, and London, but he remains rooted in Angola where he lives and works. The themes of this 2005 exhibition, the 30th anniversary of Angola’s independence, are the venerable baobab and water spirits associated with the cult of Kyanda. The symbolism and mythology of the earth and sea infuse his painting, prints, and even his ceramics. More than thirty works are all accompanied by essays by Gumbe and three critics and art historians. Biodata is included.

Kenyan painter Joseph Bertiers is a media hound, a news junkie, and the barrage of current events provides themes for his work. Formerly a sign painter, Bertiers turned to painting international celebrities and politicians - - O. J. Simpson, Princess Diana, Bill Clinton, Nelson Mandela and a host of other immediately recognizable people and events. In this exhibition catalog forty-four of his “media paintings” are reproduced in color. Californian art dealer Ernie Wolfe III, the artist’s representations, interviews Bertiers. Karal Ann Marling contributes an essay “Joseph Bertiers: moralist, comic, telepainter” (pages 11-23).

Judith Mason (1938-2016) has been making art for more than 50 years. The path she has taken is individual and separate from her contemporaries. She was a master of drawing, as her haunting images reveal. She remained active internationally during the isolation years of apartheid, including representing South African at the 1966 Venice Biennale.

Religious imagery and literary allusions pervade her work, but she also reflects her political and social conscience. One section of this catalog shows her self-portraits; another, her artist’s books. This catalog includes an interview with Mason and several of her earlier essays, so we hear the artist’s voice explaining her work and the thought processes that go with it. There are essays by curator Wilhelm van Rensburg and Lorraine Chaskalson. The exhibition was held at the Standard Bank Gallery, Johannesburg and the Sasol Art Museum, University of Stellenbosch, October 2008-March 2009.

Ethiopian-American artist Julie Mehretu has achieved name recognition in art circles. Her distinctive map-like, layered landscapes of geography are replete with motion, swirls, and turbulence. Born in 1970 in Addis Ababa, she earned a MFA at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1997 and by 2007 was living in New York. Her works are owned by an impressive list of international art museums. Essays by Siemon Allen, Rebecca R. Hart, and Kinsey Katchka discuss the works in this exhibition, which date mainly from 2006-2007.

Abstract Expressionist painter Mohammed Kacimi is afraid of neither bold colors nor hugh canvases. Known for his work with both, he is an artist and a poet who conceives his creative work in series, developing and elaborating an idea in multiple ways in word and image -- storytellers, Ouidah, dyers of Marrakech, Sheherazad and the war. One of his more recent projects -- "Cave of future times" -- is a grim series of installations looking at a horrific future filled with the detritus and death of the twentieth century.

Born in Meknes, Morocco, Kacimi developed his love of art on his own inclination long before he entered the art school in Casablanca. He became a true intellectual, writing as much as painting, traveling, absorbing art in Europe and Western Asia, organizing artists and writers in Morocco. His is a restless intellect, always pushing the boundaries, always exploring in the mind and on the ground -- Turkey, Egypt, Sahara, Benin. Always attuned to the world around him with -- the Gulf War or a sunset in the desert.

Kacimi has exhibited widely in Morocco, Europe, and beyond. His whirlwind biography, recounted by Marie-Odile Briot, appropriately ends "The rest of the story has yet to be lived." This retrospective exhibition catalog illustrates more than one hundred of his works and shows photographs of Kacimi at work in his studio.

Kader Attia, born 1970 in France to Algerian parents, has a dual identity, moving back and forth from Paris to rural Algeria while growing up. He studied art in Paris and Barcelona. Best known for his installations and photography, his work addresses themes of immigration, identity, xenophobia, religion, consumerism, child abuse, and urban violence and poverty. His subject matter ranges from whirling dervishes, cross-dressing dancers, transvestites, disco balls, Chinese fortune cookies, and vending machines to a darker world of police truncheons, handcuffs, drills, old refrigerators, and umbrella spokes. His engagement in social criticism uses installations, sculpture, photography, video and drawing.

The main catalog essay is by Tami Katz-Freiman. The artist’s very insightful interview is with Jean-Louis Pradel. In it he discusses many of his installations, including "Wall paintings," "The fridges," and "Correspondence.". The catalog is published on the occasion of the his solo exhibition in Lyon, Musée d'art contemporain, June 15 to August 13, 2006, and Grenoble, Magasin, Centre national d'art contemporain, October 21, 2006 to January 7, 2007.

The repair embodies Kadia Attia’s reflections on the broken bodies in the world of humans and objects. Mending them fails to erase the effects of the trauma they sustained or to restore their original identities. Instead, mending these bodies merely produces hybrid entities that are fetishized and aestheticized. Nor does repair compensate for what had been lost; it only leaves scares, stiches, and other traces that make the broken body familiar again. Attia’s artistic philosophy reflects personal responses to the forces of alienation and uprootedness, including religion, colonialism and modern material consumerism.

The repair includes a conversation with the artist by Kitty Scott and comments by Manthia Diawara and Jacinto Lageira that shed light on the aesthetic approach of Attia Kader. Biodata is included.

Dorothy Kay, of Anglo-Irish background, emigrated to South Africa in 1910 to marry Hobart Kay. Already a trained painter, she pursued her career in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, and became well-known for her portraits in oil. She also worked as a professional illustrator for Outspan, and during World War II, she became an accredited war artist for South Africa. Ceramics and printmaking engaged her talents at various times in her long, productive career. This straight-forward biography, written by her sister, is a chronological account which draws heavily on letters and personal recollections. It is not an art historical study.

Bamako-based photographer Seydou Keïta is surprised by his sudden international celebrity. Now in retirement, he shares his trove of photo negatives with André Magnin, who presents 270 of Keïta's photographic portraits in this black and white album. Keïta had a successful photography studio in central Bamako from 1948 to 1962; after that, he became Mali's official photographer. Magnin's interviews with Keïta and his uncle, Tièmòkò Keïta, form the text which sets the scene for the photos. Youssouf Tata Cissé offers postscript on "A short history of Bamako and of the family of the famous photographer Seydou Keïta."

Reviewed by Olu Oguibe in Nka: journal of contemporary African art (Ithaca, NY) no. 8, spring-summer 1998, page 65

Malian photographer Seydou Keïta was only fourteen years old when he received his first camera, a Kodak Brownie, and began to teach himself the art of photography, specializing in portraiture. By the time he opened his studio in Bamako, in 1948, he had learned more about technique from a local professional photographer who had been in the colonial army and had himself studied with an illustrious photographer in Paris; and he had moved on to a 13 x 18 format camera. He worked in daylight, made no enlargements, and, to economize, took only one shot. He spent his nights in the darkroom.

The Bamako middle class flocked to his studio—alone and in couples, families, and groups. He supplied props for those (usually men) who wanted them—Western clothing, a watch, a radio, a scooter. Women wore more traditional garments in gorgeous, flamboyant prints—a design element that reappeared in Keïta’s patterned backdrops. His poses were inventive and his results unique. We see Malians during the 1950s, flourishing, elegant, and dignified as their country rushed toward Independence.

Keïta saved his negatives but not original prints. The book’s first section, “Vintage,” reproduces originals found here and there that had managed to survive years of relative neglect. The rest are reproductions of prints made between 1993 and 2001 from Keïta’s negatives and signed by him. They are grouped according to the years in which they were first taken; each of the six sections is introduced by a quotation from the photographer describing how he worked.

The preface, by Sylvie Hubac, and essays by Souleymane Cissé, Jérôme Neutre, Yves Aupetitallot, Robert Storr, and Dan Leers, plus an interview with Ke?ta by Andre Magnin consider the artist’s work in various contexts. The catalogue includes a chronology (pp. 209-211), list of works (pp. 212-217), list of exhibitions (pp. 218-220), and list of public and private collections holding the works (pp. 221-223).

Souleymane Keita, born on Gorée Island in 1947, returned to Gorée in 1985 to find his roots. After a five-year sojourn in New Youk, which was both stimulating and enervating, the artist needed a change of scene. Back on Gorée, his painting became more abstract, more ethereal, more in touch with his surroundings -- the sea and fishing are common motifs. Keita studied art in Dakar and early in his career did mural commissions. Ceramics is another artistic interest, though his studio on Gorée is too small to allow him to pursue that line.

Interviewed by Sylvain Sankalé, Keita talks about his aspirations, inspirations and passions. The artist at forty-six reflects back on a career that is filled with accomplishment. Keita remains an active artist, dutifully going to his studio everyday. The artist at work ("L'artiste au travail: Souyleman Keita dans son atelier," pp. 55-59) reveals Keita's well-worked out processes of creativity. Several of Keita's paintings are illustrated in color, though mainly recent ones. A list of public and private collections owning work by Keita is appended.

Reviewed by Mark DeLancey in African book publishing record (Oxford) 23 (1) 1997, page 15.

Keith Alexander, born in Zimbabwe but relocated to South Africa, began his artistic career as a sculptor but switched to painting. He became known for his haunting and brilliant hyper-realistic and surrealistic canvasses, particularly those inspired by desert landscapes. Unpopulated, stark landscapes, architectural ruins, overgrown and deserted, beached ships, deep shadows and mists contrasting with sun-blinding light characterize Alexander’s paintings. 116 color reproductions of his paintings are included. Alexander’s career was propelled and managed by his wife Elizabeth, who first proposed travel to the Namib Desert, which marked a major turning point in his work. Later they traveled to Madagascar. Both died of cancer with six months of each other in 1997 and 1998. The story of his poignant and in many ways sad life is ably told by David Robbins, writer and journalist.

Kemang Wa Lehulere (1984-) was the 2017 Artist of the Year at the Deutsche Bank KunstHalle in Berlin. In this exhibition and catalog, Wa Lehulere reveals his fascination with birds and landscapes. He is influenced by Gladys Mgudlandu (1917-1979) and her artworks are in the exhibition and catalog, too. Wa Lehulere is a multimedia artist, who works with paintings, sketches, drawings, found objects and installations.

Contents: Kemang Wa Lehulere : artist of the year 2017 / Franziska Kunz -- Joining the dots : how history lives in the present / Kemang Wa Lehulere speaks with Britta Färber -- Left in silence / Carlos Gamerro and Victoria Noorthoorn -- A partial song in three fragments / Kate Nesin -- Become post-apartheid and other history-related considerations in the collection work of Kemang Wa Lehulere / Elvira Dyangani Ose -- Plates -- Insert : Gladiolus -- List of works.

William Kentridge’s end of century meteoric passage across the international art stage included a London showing in between those in continental Europe and the United States. The political moment and alignment of stars converged for this Johannesburg artist. A new catalog for London was required, though naturally the Kentridge œuvre is the same. Dan Cameron surveys the career, and Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev interviews the artist. J. M. Coetzee focuses on the animated film The history of the main complaint (1996) and its central character Soho Eckstein.

Kentridge’s own writings, a selection of which are reprinted, offer insight into the thinking and ideas behind the works. One of the hallmarks of Kentridge’s œuvre is the transplantation of foreign characters into the unknown landscapes, mine fields, and vortex of South Africa – Woyzeck, Faustus, and Ubu.

William Kentridge’s soaring international reputation following his appearance in Documenta 1997 is built on major retrospectives in Brussels, Munich, Graz, Barcelona and London. The opening venue in Brussels was a show organized by the Société des expositions du Palais des beaux-arts de Bruxelles, curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev. This catalog was published on that occasion. It covers his prints, drawings, animations, and theatrical productions with the Handspring Puppet Company, mainly from 1989 to the present, though his career as an artist began in 1975. Includes biodata and extensive excerpts from writings about the artist.

Documentary video by Beata Lipman on the artist William Kentridge. In interview, the artist explains the technique of his film making with clips from his movie "Johannesburg 2nd Greatest City after Paris." This video offers an unique insight of the artist's creative process. It includes excerpts from films and the theater work, "Woyzek on the Highveld" (1992) produced with the Handspring Puppet Company; "Felix in Exile," (1994) the artist's 5th animated film in the series.

William Kentridge Flute traces the creative project that began with the 1998 commission to produce The magic flute and culminated in the opera’s dark progeny, Black box/chamber noire. Through Kentridge’s commentary, an interview, essays, gorgeous photographs and reproductions of the artist’s works on paper, William Kentridge Flute documents the relationship between the rambunctious eighteenth-century opera and Black box, the somber masterpiece about the massacre of the Herero people in South West Africa (Namibia) at the beginning of the twentieth century. - - from the publisher’s blurb.

Ever versatile and inventive, Kentridge explores antique maps made into tapestries, or overlaid with construction paper and pins, or drawn upon with ink and charcoal. He introduces his “nose” in bronze or on paper, as improbably equestrian, which is prelude to the opera The nose at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 2010.

Contents: Preface / Lia Rumma --William Kentridge : between utopia and dystopia / Achille Bonito-Oliva --The nose : learning from the absurd / William Kentridge -- Studies on cartography and on original documents, tapestries and sculptures -- Studies on original maps and documents -- Bronze sculptures -- "Every home to me is alien" : Marina Tsvetaeva, Homesickness, 1928 / Angel Tecce -- Textile cartography : notes on the weaving of tapestries / Fabrizio Tramontano -- The projections of the geographer and those of the artist : the background cartography to a new cycle of works by William Kentridge / Fabrizio Tramontano -- William Kentridge in Naples : story of a palimpsest / Maria De Vivo -- William Kentridge, biography.

William Kentridge, presented here in the Tate Modern’s Modern artists series, is an excellent compilation of the artist’s creative life and his many projects. Kentridge’s oeuvre is so diverse yet so well integrated. If one is looking for a well written and well illustrated book about Kentridge, try this one.

Contents: To Johannesburg with love? -- Drawings for projection: Johannesburg, 2nd greatest city after Paris, 1989 -- Desperados, no-hopes, drunks and pimps -- Arc/Procession: develop, catch up, even surpass, 1990 -- Seeing and knowing -- Procession, 2000 -- Fortunate failures: the abandoned actor -- Journey to the moon, 2003 -- Self-image, splits and doubles -- I am not me, the horse is not mine, 2008 -- Migrations across a porous studio: that poor, damn rhinoceros again -- The image of the rhinoceros -- A reluctant innovator: Kentridge in context

William Kentridge, printmaker extraordinaire, comments on his technique, the visual effects he tries to achieve, and the print projects he has worked on. In this impressive catalog, 120 of his more than 300 prints are presented chronologically, by series, to show the artist’s evolution from his earliest print in 1976 up to 2005. Susan Stewart, who writes the catalog essay, points out that although Kentridge has mastered many print techniques and experimented with a variety of grounds and papers, his preference is etching. His œuvre resonates with William Hogarth’s 18th-century prints, which inspired him.

Reviewed by Dominic Thorburn in De arte (Pretoria) no. 74, 2006, pages 75-77.

William Kentridge’s successful retrospective exhibition, traveling in Europe in 1998 and 1999 was enlarged and updated for the 2001-2003 engagement in the United States. A new show with a new set of curators, American this time, required a new catalog. The American run and its catalog include recent works from 2000 as well as earlier work from the 1980s, which the European catalog did not cover. Essays by Neal Benezra, Staci Boris, Lynne Cooker, and Ari Sitas provide the context, political and personal, for Kentridge’s remarkable œuvre of drawings, prints, and animation stills. The videos and “projections” can only be presented in the catalog as static but still powerful works. An interview with the artist gives Kentridge a voice to talk about his artistic ideas. The chronology documents not only Kentridge’s C.V. but also the changing political environment of South Africa that so much informs his work.

Kentridge discusses the creative process of making his animated films, drawings, and theatre work. Shows him in the final stages of animating "Stereoscope" and includes excepts from various projects. In his art work Kentridge investigates the diseased, amnesiac consciousness of late and post-apartheid South Africa.

The five themes that recur in William Kentridge’s œuvre – Artist in the studio; Soko and Felix; Ubu and the procession; The magic flute; and The nose – are presented in this major retrospective exhibition in San Francisco in 2009. Kentridge’s art work has always had strong theatrical and cinematic roots, and he continues to push the boundaries of animation, film, drawing, printmaking and performance. His storytelling and social commentary are moving out from his South African milieu to more universal concerns for the human condition and the possibilities of creative expression.

The University of Brighton Gallery held a William Kentridge Festival in 2007, featuring images from his animated films, filmic installations, and prints. As part of the festival, the Soho Eckstein films were screened. This catalog focuses on the images, accompanied by essays by Tom Hickey, Mick Hartney, Pete Seddon, Mark Abel, Jessic Dubow, and Ruth Rosengarten.

This is the catalog of an exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, December 12, 2007 through April 6, 2008, featuring the tapestries whose cartoons he created. The tapestries were woven by women weavers in Swaziland. Contents: Permanent projections / Carlos Basualdo -- Becoming aware in a world of people on the move / Gabriele Guercio -- (Un)civil engineering : William Kentridge's allegorical landscapes / Okwui Enwezor -- A farm in Eloff Street / Ivan Vladislavic.

Exhibition reviewed by A. M. Weaver in Art South Africa (Cape Town) 6 (4) winter 2008, pages 90-91.

Following his studies at l’Ecole des beaux Arts in Tunis, and driven by his love of ceramics, Khaled Ben Slimane embarked on tours that took him to Iran, Pakistan and then Japan. At Escualla Massana in Barcelona, he added to his artistic skills and perspectives, which he realized in an enormous body of works.

Ben Slimane’s art includes ceramics, pottery, painting and calligraphy. He often combines these media in producing a single work of art. A peculiar technique of Ben Slimane is what he calls paraphes (signatures). These consist of twirls of lines and abstract forms, either in black and white or in color. Another form of this technique he calls “contract” in imitation of the legal instruments. Some of these works show a procession of continuous squiggly lines, or small, amorphous, multicolored objects floating over the surface of the canvas.

His ceramic styles combine national traditions with influences he absorbed in Japan. To these styles he adds calligraphy and painting and a touch of spirituality, or mysticism, which gives his work attractive originality. Ben Slimane’s work has been exhibited worldwide, including in New Delhi and Barcelona.

David Koloane, one of South Africa’s prominent and best known artists, is also a curator, critic and arts administrator. Born in Alexandra township in 1938, he was befriended by Louis Maqhubela, who helped set his path toward art. Koloane studied at Bill Ainslie’s studio in Johannesburg and later participated in Triangle Workshops in New York and from there co-founded Thupelo Art Project in South Africa. Koloane broke precedent of black South African artists with his abstract paintings -- much criticized at the time – but his cityscapes and city dwellers, his dog series, and his most recent assemblages attest to his range and diversity. In this book, which is part of David Krut’s series of monographs on South African artists, Véronique Tadjo, an artist and writer from Côte d’Ivoire, gives a lyrical rendition of the David Koloane story and the turbulent South Africa in which he lives.

Reviewed by Michael Herbst in De arte (Pretoria) 68, September 2003, pages 59-64; reviewed by Ivor Powell in ArtSouthAfrica (Cape Town) 1 (2) summer 2002, page 62.

South African painter François Krige (1913-1994) was a reserved man who avoided the limelight and shied away from art exhibition circles. On his death in 1994, he left a studio full of paintings, most never seen. Now his nephew Justin Fox brings to light this remarkable painter and his lifetime of painting. Krige grew up in Stellenbosch and belonged to a prominent Afrikaaner family. He studied art at the Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town. He traveled extensively throughout his life and painted and sketched wherever he went. During World War II he was a war artist in North Africa and the Mediterranean.

Known for his still lifes, Krige also painted portraits, landscapes, wildlife, and scenes of indigenous peoples. Following Fox’s biography, there is an appreciation and appraisal of François Krige’s painting by art historian Stefan Hundt.

Lagos based artist Kunle Adeyemi explores Yoruba themes, symbols and motifs in his art work. A graduate of Yaba College of Technology, he also apprenticed with Bruce Onobrakpeya, and his work clearly shows the influence of the master printmaker. In this self-published book, Adeyemi writes about his choice of subject matter, use of colors, and techniques. He does oil painting, a variety of printing making techniques, and mixed media. A series of tributes by colleagues and critics conclude the volume.

Grahamstown, South Africa, in 1834 was a frontier town to which the artist Frederick I’Ons emigrated from England. The Xhosa wars were underway, and it was a period of political turmoil. I’Ons, a quiet and uncontroversial man, was able to eke out a living as artist for the next half century in this rough and tumble frontier. His landscape and scenes are of interest today not as great works of art (which they are not) but as historical documents. His true metier was portraiture, especially of African. Her was more spontaneity and lightness than it his stodgy landscapes and formal portraits of colonials. His œuvre reflects the history of a particular time and place. He established no school of art, left no imitators, but remains an important nineteenth century artist in South Africa. A catalogue raisonné of extant pictures is included (pages 48-72) by painting type and be collections.

Lamidi Fakeye died before this book was published. How fortunate then that Yemisi Shyllon had taken the initiative to interview Fakeye at length and in multiple sessions to capture the sculptor’s story in his own words. Ohioma Pogoson led the interview team. More interviews were planned but death intervened. Still we are left with a rich and valuable narrative of Fakeye’s life and work. Shyllon owns 43 Fakeye sculptures, all illustrated here, which Fakeye elaborates on—the iconography, symbolism and decorative elements of each sculpture.

Lamidi Fakeye has been more successful than most African artists in straddling cultures and negotiating competing identities. His "career on two continents" is the epitome of cultural hybridity. A practicing Muslim, he is best known for his Christian and Yoruba religious sculptures. A non-schooled artist, he teaches at universities and gives public lectures. A man of humble origins, he is recipient of numerous awards and is an unofficial cultural ambassador for Nigeria.

Born in Ila Orangun, Fakeye took to woodcarving early and naturally, for the Fakeyes are renowned woodcarvers. In this autobiography, Fakeye writes a beguilingly conversational account of his peripatetic childhood, his fortuitous meeting with Father Kevin Carroll in 1949, and his apprenticeship under master sculptor George Bamidele Arowoogun at the Oye-Ekiti workshop. Fakeye's association with the Catholics led to numerous prestigious commissions for doors, panels, posts, and statuary, and in 1960 to his first solo exhibition in Ibadan. A second exhibition in 1961 resulted in forging links with Americans from Western Michigan University, then working in Ibadan. Fakeye's friendships and long associations with his colleagues in Kalamazoo, Michigan (his American home town) culminated in the 1996 retrospective exhibition in Kalamazoo and the present book.

Fakeye has a knack for being at the right place at the right time. His story of the 1960s and 1970s was just that -- meeting the people who could advance his career at home and abroad. By the 1980s Fakeye was ensconced in Ile-Ife at the University of Ife (later Obafemi Awolowo University) as artist-in-residence, where he is today. His adult career is as peripatetic as his childhood, as he moves back and forth between Nigeria, the United States and beyond.

Fakeye introduces his personal narrative with a long discussion of Yoruba woodcarving traditions: the social role of woodcarvers; their apprenticeship and training; the carving tools and techniques; and the type of wood used in carving. Fakeye's own sculptures are illustrated and carefully documented in eight color plates and eight black-and-white plates and in numerous photographs throughout the text, showing additional commissioned works, Fakeye working in the studio, and other pictures of family, friends and colleagues.

Reviewed by Jean M. Borgatti in African arts (Los Angeles) 30 (4): 91, autumn 1997; by Timothy O. Ajayi in Ife: journal of the Institute of Cultural Studies (Ile-Ife, Nigeria) no. 7: 98-99, 1999. Exhibition at Dupree Art Center and Gallery, Hope College, Holland, Michigan, October 11-November 22, 1996, reviewed by Judith Perani in African arts (Los Angeles) 30 (4): 79-81, autumn 1997.

This work celebrates Yoruba sculptor Lamidi Fakeye whose acclaim as a successful international artist has not subverted or eroded his artistic vision; he remains true to his Yoruba heritage. At Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife, his colleagues have honored him with this Festschrift. Five of the eight essays discuss his work directly. Moyo Okediji introduces the papers and provides a brief biographical sketch of Fakeye (pages 1-6). The volume was reviewed by Toyin Falola, "Carving a career," West Africa (London) no. 3707: 1574, August 29-September 4, 1988.

(1) Akinola, V. O. "The image of women in the wood sculptures of Lamidi Fakeye," pages 110-120. In Fakeye's corpus of sculpture, the female figure predominates, and in its rendering reflects accurately, Akinola feels, Yoruba beliefs about women aesthetically and socially. The emphasis on humility and submission, beauty, fertility, devotion to duty, domestic and religious, all find expression in Fakeye's sculpture.

2) Aremu, P. S. O. "Decorative patterns as important factors in the evaluation of Lamidi Fakeye's carvings," pages 121-134. Aremu identifies both traditional designs (e.g., "snake's bones") and contemporary designs (e.g., zig-zags) in Fakeye's use of decorative patterning on his sculptures. Fakeye accomplishes this without apparent dissonance, for the result is harmonious and aesthetically pleasing, which is the sculptor's aim. He achieves a unique stylization in the patterns he selects. Aremu analyzes the surface qualities of several of Fakeye's recent works, concluding that they greatly enrich his sculpture and appeal aesthetically to his wider audience.

(3) Lawuyi, Olatunde Bayo. "The images of women in Lamidi Fakeye's work: an analysis of a contemporary art," pages 96-109. Fakeye's sculpture, which Lawuyi sees as androgynous in character, may relate to Fakeye's personal religious identity, which centers on Shango, Eshu and Ifa. Shango and Esu both have male/female qualities. The full range of Yoruba beliefs about women are not represented in Fakeye's work, although certain cultural beliefs about gender relationships are affirmed by it, e.g., male dominance and socio-economic inequality. Lawuyi concludes that Fakeye, in identifying Eshu with men and Shango with women, is orienting gender relations where "the male's moral enterprise is the protection of its status, while that of the women is the resistance of domination" (page 107). This paper is based on interviews with Fakeye.

(4) Okediji, Moyo. "Facts and figures: form of Fakeye's figments," pages 135-157. Fakeye creates "mythographs," that is, art objects which express Yoruba myths; his commitment to myths as a source of inspiration has shaped his style. Okediji argues that the verbal and visual come together in Fakeye's wide ranging images. But how has Fakeye's visualization of myth changed and evolved over his creative career? The process of evolving is itself a sort of artistic self-criticism, as the artist shifts subject content and style. Van Gogh provides a parallel example in his shift from the "The Potato Eaters" period to the sunflower period.

Okediji points to Fakeye's deviation from his early mentors Arowogun and Bamidele, father and son, as evidence of a subtle criticism. From imitation to selection and combining different elements, Fakeye created his own style. Okediji demonstrates this outcome by analyzing three carved panels by the three sculptors each depicting equestrian figures. By comparing a recent work by Fakeye with one of his older sculptures, a further stylistic development appears in the abandonment of "African proportion." Recent works, in particular the Oduduwa statue, show a clear move toward realism where the head (ori) is more realistically portrayed.

(5) Olapade, Ola. "Oduduwa: a mythical statue," pages 84-95. Lamidi Fakeye's carved statue of Oduduwa is inspired by the Yoruba myths of Oduduwa's role as creator and ancestor of the Yoruba people. Olapade recounts these myths and relates them to Fakeye's representation of Oduduwa. But should Fakeye's work be considered traditional or contemporary? Olapade concludes that it is essentially traditional, despite the fact that Fakeye as an artist does not meet all the criteria of a traditional artist and that the Oduduwa statue was commissioned by Obafemi Awolowo University and is not inherently sacred.

Christian Lattier was a profoundly original sculptor who knew both success and torments in his life. Trained in France, where he discovered both his African roots and his distinctive medium: rope sculpture, Lattier returned to Côte d'Ivoire in 1962 in the euphoric wake of independence, but his prickly character and cantankerous genius put him at odds with the Ivoirien art establishment. Although he won the grand prize at the 1966 Dakar Festival and had exhibited in Europe, North America and Brazil, his career at home, especially during the final decade of his life, was marked by personality conflicts, battles with the school authorities where he taught (Institut National des Arts), and struggles against his own mortality. A smoldering, explosive temperament was masked by the image of a pipe-smoking professor and the whimsey of his car painted rose color.

Lattier's corpus embraces a remarkable diversity of subjects and themes. "Panthère," the larger-than-life crouching rope panther, one of his most powerful sculptures, won the Chenavard Prize in France in 1954, yet was turned down by three museums including IFAN. Lattier was bitter. "Panthère" seems far removed in spirit and intention from the emaciated "Christ" or his series of graceful, non-fearsome masks. He was not above slightly scatological humor, as in the work "Interdit d'uriner," which was a commentary on Abidjan. Nineteen of Lattier's sculptures are today in the Musée National de Côte d'Ivoire in Abidjan (see inventory, pp. 129-138).

South African painter Maggie Laubser (Magdalena Maria Laubser) was born into a middle class Afrikaners family. After initial attempts at art—through which she came to know Cape Town artists—she traveled to Europe at age 27. She spent eleven years—minus one year when she was back in South Africa (1922-1924)—immersing herself in art and painting portraits and landscapes. After resettling in South Africa in the 1930s, she became focused on the world around her and began painting local people—Blacks and Coloreds—scenes of work, and animals. Ducks, geese, and other birds are her signature images. She joined the avant-garde New Group. Laubser was sometimes compared to Irma Stern, and they did have things in common—women of substance (literally and figuratively), never married, extensive experience in Europe, influenced by European Expressionism, and known for their portraits of Black South Africans.

Maggie Laubser was a painter all her life. She had the means and financial wherewithal that allowed her to devote her life to art. As a young woman, she spent many years in Europe painting and traveling. She studied at the Slade School of Art in London (1914-1919) but was more influenced by German Expressionism and Van Gogh than the formal academic art served up at the Slade. Her forte was landscape and portraiture. She painted from nature and was drawn to rural settings. This love of the outdoors and outdoor subjects (she was noted for her ducks and geese paintings) was rooted in her childhood on a South African farm. Her unique sense of reality was not always well received in South African art circles, but eventually she and her work became established and accepted.

The catalogue raisonné documents almost eighteen hundred of Laubser's paintings and drawings, arranged by period and theme. A detailed chronology and biographical essay of Laubser's life provide the context for her œuvre.

South African artist Lien Botha works in photo-based media and installations. A graduate of Michaelis School of Art in Cape Town in 1988, Botha makes biography the center of her work. Her art projects from 1990 to 2002 featured here trace her evolution as an artist. The essay by Jamal Ashraf provides the context to these projects. She is described as “a quiet and gnomic voice,” but is someone who abhors consistency. She is clearly rooted in South Africa, and her social critique speaks to the historical and the personal.. More than seventy of her works are presented here.

Reviewed by Michael Herbst in De arte (Pretoria) 68, September 2003, pages 9-64; by Lauren Shantall in Art South Africa (Cape Town) 1 (1) spring 2002, page 63.

Lionel Davis is a survivor. A Cape Town artist best known for his prints and drawings, Davis grew up in District Six. He witnessed the removal and destruction of District Six. He was incarcerated on Robben Island 1964 to 1971 and later was under house arrest. His discovery of the Community Arts Project (CAP) gave him a new path to follow. There he learned printmaking. In the early 1980s he went to Rorke’s Drift art school to continue his training. Later on he took up painting and mixed media works.

This catalog, accompanying a 2017 retrospective exhibition at the South African National Gallery, is a deep and thorough presentation of the life and art of this extraordinary artist. Eleven essays address the many phases of his career. The copious color illustrations of Davis’ oeuvre tell it all.

Reviewed by Robin K. Crigler in African arts (Los Angeles) 52 (3) autumn 2019, pages 86-87.

Lisa Brice, one of the generation of “post-apartheid kids,” is South Africa’s first truly feminist artist. Feminism and gender issues which had never germinated in the larger socio-political struggle against apartheid, now in 1992 burst forth in the explicitly sexual and violent work of Lisa Brice. Shocked by the dehumanizing sex trade she saw on a visit to Thailand, Brice exploited this theme in her Sex Kittens series. Cape Town was not quite ready this in your face stuff, and her first real success was in Germany. Later she moved on to explore other feminist themes, such as domestic security and female stereotypes. This retrospective catalog (1989 to 1997) begins with her student work at University of Cape Town’s Michaelis School of Art, which also shocks as it exposes the violence of a bloody and almost fatal attack on her housemate in 1990. Her most recent work (1997) takes on the rainbow nation and political realities in the New South Africa.

The 2006 exhibition and catalog of Bertina Lopes are primarily tributes to the artist. Nineteen tributes, a few of which are essay length, are followed by her artwork—paintings and figurative bronzes. The art is presented chronologically, which is helpful to appreciate her evolution as an artist. Most are from her own collection.

Art historian Claudio Crescentini, an Italian scholar and curator, knew Bertina Lopes very well. His book, published five years after she died, is the story of the woman as well as her oeuvre. The title “Arte et antagonismo” (Art and antagonism) suggests her paths of departure from and returning to Mozambique and her African origins and her European influences. She admired Picasso and other early modernists immensely. But she retained her ‘Africaness’ in her figurative paintings as well as her abstract paintings and bronze sculptures. Lopes connections with many artists, poets, curators and politicians are documented in the photographs in this book—supplied by the Bertina Lopes Archive in Rome.

Bertina Lopes (1924-2012) was a transnational artist—before we popularized that moniker. Born in Mozambique, lived in Lisbon and Rome, returned to Mozambique, she retained her spiritual connections to the land of her birth. Her art throughout her long life reflects her African roots in themes, aesthetics, and color. This biography published in the year after her death includes many archival photographs of family and friends as well as tributes by those who knew her. Images of her art are all black-&-white.

Bertina Lopes died in February 2012. Five months later, she was honored with an exhibition in her country of birth, held at Museu Nacional de Arte (Maputo, Mozambique), July 24-September 24, 2012. In this catalog Alda Costa and Julieta Massimbe each offer tributes to the artist and her art. The selection of her paintings in the catalog are presented in a more or less chronological order. So we see how her work evolves. The chronological bibliography covers writing about her in Maputo, from 1950 to 2015.

By the time this exhibition “Dentro la vita Bertina Lopes” occurred in 1996, Lopes was well established in Rome and was recognized by several international art awards. Her paintings convey both African and European relationships—cultural dialectics. She was committed to freedom and political activism, especially for her homeland of Mozambique. Essays by Simonetta Lux and Enrico Crispolti discuss her artistic styles, themes, and her dedication to humanity.

Madya was a calabash engraver, born in Kitombe village on the Atlantic coast in the Belgian Congo around 1908. He travelled to Banana and Matadi where he sold his calabashes to sailors and Europeans. By 1939 the Amis de l’Art Indigène de Léopoldville had ‘discovered’ Madya. This slim book elaborates Madya’s tools, materials, and techniques used to decorate calabashes. Even more interesting are the variety of motifs he created. Ten plates of his work show human figures, animals, plants and geometric patterns. All of the calabashes belong to the Musée de la Vie indigène.

Malangatana is Mozambique’s best known artist. He began making art in the late 1950s without benefit of formal training, but with the encouragement and patronage of a few foreigners, notably Amâncio “Pancho” Guedes. Guedes offers recollections of those early years in Maputo, which is valuable since he himself is a critical player in this history. Malangatana’s painting style and narrative compositions seem to have sprung full blown into a distinctive artistic vision. Even his early works show a maturity and confidence that might take others years to achieve. Thematically, too, Malangatana has a lot to say. His paintings narrate social and political themes (e.g. forced labor, prisons), morality tales (e.g., forbidden sex, sin), folk tales, horrific phantasmagoria (e.g., bleeding, dismemberment, suffering), and Biblical homilies. His lines are bold; his colors primary: red, blue, yellow. Malangatana has also executed murals and outdoor sculpture. This catalogue raisonné covers works from 1959 to 1998 with most coming from the artist’s own vast collection.

Reviewed by Joyce Youmans in Journal of museum ethnography (Wantage, Oxon) 17, 2005, pages 280-282; by Ashiedu P. Ogboli in Borno Museum Society newsletter (Maiduguri: Borno Museum Society) nos. 60 and 51, July-December 2004, pages 66-70.

This is the original Portuguese language edition of this monograph, which was subsequently translated into English. See Malangatana Valente Mgwenya (2003).

This was Malangatana’s last major exhibition in Lisbon—seven years before his death. The catalog is arranged by four media: paintings, drawings, prints, and his less well known ceramics. The works are presented chronologically so one can traced the evolution of his creations from the 1960s onward. There is also a brief section on conservation of his paintings, showing before and after treatments. Five short essays—really tributes to the master—introduce the catalog.

Malangatana’s ancestral roots are in Matalana, and it is to Matalana he returns now as an older man of the world. His Centro Cultural de Matalana is a dream fulfilled, a giving back, and a tribute to those roots. In this catalog the theme of coming full circle (“de Mataland a Matalana”) circumscribes the artistic life of the artist. The early years are documented with some fascinating photographs of Malangatana and his young family in the 1960s. The paintings and drawings in the catalog are mainly from the 1990s.

Ernest Mancoba was interviewed in March 2002 at the end of his life—he died later that year—by Hans Ulrich Olbrist. It is included in this catalog along with a series of photographs of the artist at his advanced age. An essay by Rasheed Araeen “Modernity, mlodernism and Afruica’s authentic voice” is reprinted in this catalog—originally published in Third text (London) 24 (2) March 2010. The art on offer in this exhibition are works on paper, using ink, oil, and oil pastel, or a combination thereof. They date from the 1960s to the 1990s.

During an interview with Bridget Thompson, Ernest Mancoba revealed the inspiration behind the retrospective In the Name of All Humanity: The African Spiritual Expression of Ernest Mancoba. When Thompson asked Mancoba if his paintings mourned for his people, he quickly responded “Yes, but Bridget, never forget that my people are the people of the whole world.”

Leaving South Africa in 1938, Mancoba did not return home for another 56 years. During his time abroad he became a true citizen of the world, marrying a Dannish woman, finding himself in a Nazi internment camp, and attending university with a diverse group of artists from across the globe. His experiences led him to hold dear a proverb his mother had once told him “umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye abantu,” meaning “a person is a person by and because of the other person.” His work showcases his deep interest in the connection among humans and reintroducing community into the modern space.

This catalogue of "In the Name of All Humanity: The African Spiritual Expression of Ernest Mancoba," features a number of essays including a funeral oration from his son, Wonga Mancoba, and more, exploring the life and art of Ernest Mancoba’s non-Western aesthetic and his global social capacity. This retrospective exhibition of Mancoba's work was held at the Gold of Africa Museum, Cape Town, June 26-September 30, 2006.

Reviewed by Lize van Robbroeck in Third text (London) 22 (6) November 2008, pages 796-798.

South African artist Ernest Mancoba has been rescued from undeserved obscurity by Elza Miles. An exile from South Africa since 1938, Mancoba achieved modest success and recognition as an artist in Paris and in Kattinge, Denmark, where he lived with his Danish wife and fellow artist Sonja Ferlov. Although they met in Paris before the Second World War, they were not married until 1942 during Mancoba's internment by the Germans. As artists, Mancoba and Ferlov influenced each other and they often worked together. Their remarkable collaboration lasted until her death in 1984.

Miles only recently discovered Mancoba's art and quite by accident. But her curiosity and indeed tenacity in pursuing this elusive subject led to the present volume Lifeline out of Africa: the art of Ernest Mancoba. She unearthed considerable information in unpublished sources, in obscure published ones, and from interviews about Mancoba's early life and art training in South Africa; she later carried out further research in France and Denmark. She tries to set his accomplishments within the context of the times, both in pre-war South Africa and post-war Europe. Miles interviewed Mancoba, who still lives in Paris, and his son, and has incorporated their perspectives and recollections into the story. Although this perhaps qualified as an authorized biography, Miles has not written a hagiography. Her account of Mancoba is unpretentious, sincere and carefully assembled. It is both biographical and art historical, although, of course, the two are interwoven. She has chosen a chronological framework as the most logical one within which to discuss Mancoba's development and his œuvre. Miles is herself an art historian and an artist (a printmaker), so she brings to this study both an historian's analysis and an artist's eye.

Miles is careful to point out gaps in the historical record, and she makes no claim to have written the definitive book on Mancoba, yet her thoroughness in gathering sources and in presenting almost a complete catalogue raisonné of his work suggest that her book will stand as one of the most solid, comprehensive studies of any black South African artist for a long time to come and as a model for future studies. The bibliographic apparatus and cross-referencing of text and images are meticulous. She provides translations into English of quotations from Danish sources. The quality of photographs is excellent; many are reproduced in color. Also included are photographs of Mancoba at various periods in his life.

Miles' scholarship deserves high marks for thoroughness of research, clear, unpretentious writing, and perceptive artistic analysis. Within the modest goals she set for herself -- "to provide a homecoming for this artist who left South Africa in 1938 and to introduce his work to a wider audience in his own country" (preface) -- she succeeds, even exceeds, admirably.

Louis Maqhubela left South Africa in 1973, following a successful launching of his career at home. But politically he found the apartheid environment untenable. He moved to Spain and later settled in London, though his work continued to be shown in South African intermittently. His artistic roots go back to the Polly Street Art Centre and “township art.” The oils and drawings he created were largely figurative, but with greater exposure to Western art, Maqhubela’s work became increasingly abstract and personal. The catalog of his work, presented here chronologically, reveals this evolution. In addition to painting and drawing Maqhubela also did a series of mosaics in the 1960s and a series of etchings in the 1980s.

Contents: Louis Khehla Maqhubela: a vigil of departure / Marilyn Martin -- A journey: as artists and friends / David Koloane -- An appreciation / John McLean -- Catalogue of works -- Biography -- Exhibitions -- Public and corporate collections.

Reviewed by Emile Maurice in De arte (Pretoria) 83, 2011, pages 87-90.

This is the first major exhibition of Marlene Dumas in Japan. The signature work, "Broken White," was inspired by a photography by Nobuyoshi Araki and also by Japanese ukiyo-e artist Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, according to the catalog essay by Yuka Uematsu. Dumas is interviewed about her work.

In 2007 Marlene Dumas, an astonishingly brilliant watercolorist, returned to her natal South Africa for this retrospective Intimate relations. Dumas, a 1970s art student at Michaelis School in Fine Art, shares her notebooks, sketches, and photographs of the period, plus her letters home from Amsterdam. One begins to appreciate her early interests, inspirations and influences, and how these have informed her major themes, indeed her entire oeuvre. Her work ranges across erotica, pornography, nakedness, the dead, faces, children, and prisoners. The wetness of watercolor yields a softness to these oft hard subjects.

Contents: Preface / Marilyn Martin -- The Michaelis School of Fine Art (1970s) / Marlene Dumas -- Questions of intimacy and relations / Emma Bedford -- Love letters / Marlene Dumas -- Mass for the painter / Marlene van Niekerk -- The human face / Achille Mbembe and Sarah Nuttall.

A major retrospective exhibition of Marlene Dumas, this catalogue documents her disturbing but engrossing watercolors of cadavers, torture victims, mournful portraits, and pornography. Dumas' collection of photographs and newspaper clippings are the starting point for these haunting images. Her oeuvre is not entirely on the darkside. The birth of her daughter inspired new work, and many of her portraits of anonymous men, women, and children are beautiful and always engaging.

This exhibition was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, June 22-September 22, 2008; the Museum of Modern Art, New York, December 14-February 16, 2009; and the Menil Collection, Houston, March 26-June 21, 2009.

Contents: Director's foreword / Jeremy Strick -- Acknowledgments / Cornelia Butler -- Painter as witness / Cornelia Butler -- Less dead / Richard Shiff -- The binding factor : the maternal gaze of Marlene Dumas / Lisa Gabrielle Mark -- Victoria Falls (for M. D.) / Matthew Monahan -- Illustrated works by Dumas -- Checklist of the exhibition -- Selected exhibition history -- Selected bibliography.

Phaidon first published this book on Marlene Dumas in 1999. The second significantly expanded edition of this books covers the decade since 1999. Lots more photographs, too.

Contents: Interview / Barbara Bloom -- Survey / Dominic van den Boogerd -- Focus / Mariuccia Casadio -- Artist's choice / Oscar Wilde, Jean Genet -- Artist's writings / Marlene Dumas -- Update / Ilaria Bonacossa.

Marlene Dumas is a South African-born, Amsterdam-based painter, and one of Holland’s most internationally admired artists. Dumas recalls in her work the painterly gestures of Expressionism, whilst combining the critical distance of Conceptual Art with the pleasures of eroticism. Through her delicately painted oil-on-canvas or ink-and-watercolor works on the female form as well as portraits of children and erotic scenes, she comments on the state of painting today. What does it mean to be a woman working within the predominantly male genre of expressionist painting? The artist often depicts women: their expressions, their body and facial typologies, their self-image, their ideals. The relationships between art and female beauty - - or between art historical models and twentieth-century supermodels - - are constant themes in her work. Dumas does not paint from life but deliberately chooses “stock” images from a variety of sources, from magazine cuttings to picture postcards to Old Master paintings, as re-observed through her contemporary perspective. Since the late 1970s she has exhibited internationally, with solo exhibitions at the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (1998) and the Tate Gallery, London (1996). In 1995 she represented the Netherlands at the 46th Venice Biennale. A major touring exhibition of Dumas’ work opened at the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerp, in 1999.

Dutch critic Dominic van den Boogerd surveys themes in Dumas’ work in relation to a range of conceptual legacies in depictions of the human figure. New York artist Barbara Bloom interviews Dumas on questions contemporary women artists are asked, from issues of intellectual process to the representation of the self. Art journalist and former editor of Vogue Italia Mariuccia Casadio focuses on Dumas’ painting Josephine (1997), reflecting on the iconic legacy of Josephine Baker. For her artist’s choice Dumas has selected two authors: Oscar Wilde, whose story “The fisherman and his soul” inspired the artist’s early series of works on the theme of mermaids; and Jean Genet, whose autobiography Le journal du voleur (1949) is excerpted here. Marlene Dumas has often acted as a spokesperson for her work; the artist’s writings section features many such seminal texts on her own art as well as meditations on love, religion, politics, and a discussion of Goya’s painting The Fates--from the book jacket.

Marlene Dumas was chosen for inclusion in the Supercontemporanea series of monographs on contemporary artists of significance. This mark of distinction is but one of Dumas’ achievements, as she has entered the artistic stratosphere in recent years. Her work is represented at auction for upwards of $3 million. The present volume covers her work from 1984 to 2006, which spans the time she has spent in Europe, having arrived in Amsterdam in 1983. The text and annotations are written in clear, lucid prose, free of art jargon. Central to her œuvre is the human figure, as she visually explores images of children, nudes, eroticism, pornography, dead bodies, and more recently Arab and Semitic portraiture.

German art collectors Eberhard and Ute Garnatz own 211 of Marlene Dumas’ “Females” series of watercolors (1992-1993), which are published in this catalog in conjunction with the exhibition, which was shown at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden Baden, the Kunsthalle Helsinki and the Nordic Watercolour Museum Skärhamm in Sweden. Inspired by the project, Dumas added some recent works to the exhibition as well as sharing some of her very early drawings, paintings, and sketches, which prefigure her later highly acclaimed œuvre. The text is comprised of three essays: A portrait of the artists as a young woman, by Matthais Winzen – “Female” is always the same, “female” is always different, by Oliver Kornhoff – Reverence and respect, by Maija Tanninen-Mattila. The catalog is superbly illustrated.

Filmed before Marlene Dumas hit the upper echelons of the art world, this documentary follows the artist mounting works in a gallery, working in her studio in Amsterdam (where she lives on a house boat with her husband), reading poetry, traveling back to her native home in South Africa, and revisiting her alma mater, Michaelis Art School in Cape Town. Archival footage of Dumas adds the biographical dimension. She comes from an Afrikaans family, steeped in the Dutch Reform Church, but she seems to have broken free of these conservative ancestral roots. The leitmotif of this film is the freedom that Dumas the artist craves. In one segment she speaks of her misgivings about having a child because of the restrictions on that places on her artistic freedom.

South African artist Marlene Dumas developed a following in Europe where she has exhibited widely from her home in the Netherlands. Less well known in the United States, Dumas was given a solo show in Boston at the Institute of Contemporary Art in 2001. This catalog reproduces her faces of models, a 1994 series of inkwash watercolors on paper. The series comprises one hundred drawings from the collection of Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands. Curator Jessica Morgan provides an introductory essay on the artist. Biodata is included.

This is Marlene Dumas’ first solo exhibition in Italy, held June through September 2003 in Venice. Suspect interrogates her very first medium: painting. It is, Dumas avers, anachronistic, outdated, decadent, arrogant. Yet she persists. She always accompanies her paintings with text, as if she does not trust the art critics or the visual image itself. She paints people, but not portraits, only anonymous individuals. And in this selection of recent works, a lot of dead bodies.

Marlene Dumas, who sees herself as a sensualist, expands on a work she did in 1987, Wet dreams, to produce a series of pen-and-ink drawings and watercolors on the same theme. Her water-saturated watercolors address “their beguiling lightness, their selective charm, and their aroused intimacy” (page 10). In this catalog, works from 1993 to 2002 are illustrated along with essays by Tilman Osterwold and Jean-Christophe Ammann.

Matias Ntundo (born 1948) is a printmaker in Mozambique, though not well known outside his country. As a Makonde he learned how to carve Makonde wooden figures, which were sent to Tanzania for selling. From 1978 on he was exposed to wood-engraving prints. In 1982 he created his first print. This catalog reveals 151 black-and-white wood-engravings from 1982 to 2010. His pictures of Mozambique address Makonde activities, families, mothers, working, colonialization, wars, Biblical stories, and animals.

Kagiso Pat Mautloa is a thoroughly urban person, well attuned to the cityscapes of Johannesburg. He walks daily from his home in Alexandra township across town through shifting neighborhoods to his Fordsburg studio at the Bag Factory. The urban environment with all its clutter, dislocation, noise and motion is the wellspring from which his creativity emerges. His assemblages and installations incorporate the detritus of urban life and speak to the city spaces and the inhabitants who occupy these mean streets.

Mautloa studied art at the E. L. C. Fine Art School, Rorke’s Drift, the Jubilee Centre and the Mofolo Art Centre. He worked under Dan Rakgoathe and David Koloane. Since 1993 he has worked as an independent artist and participated in numerous exhibitions and workshops. His earlier works were prints and painting, and he occasionally returns to these media.

Reviewed by Wilma Cruise in De Arte (Pretoria) 70, September 2004, pages 65-67; by Thembinkosi Goniwe in Art South Africa (Cape Town) 2 (4) winter 2004, pages 88-89.

Printmaker Azaria Mbatha has lived most of his adult life in Sweden far away from his KwaZulu homeland. Yet his œuvre has changed little from the early work of the 1960s. Known primarily for linocuts, Mbatha studied with Peder Gowenius at Ceza Mission Hospital and later at Rorke’s Drift E. L. C. Art and Craft Centre in the early 1960s and later taught there (1967-1968). He moved to Sweden in 1969 and has taken advanced degrees, studying other art forms, but always returning to the linocut.

The choice of Biblical themes, so typical of Mbatha’s work, has been minimized or ignored by art historians seeking to draw out the “African-ness” of this artist. This played well with the preferred narrative of artist-in-exile from apartheid South Africa. But it is now time to revisit this reading of Mbatha. The 1998 retrospective exhibition held in Durban and curated by Jill Addleson sets out precisely to do this. Essays by Mbatha and ten others form the text. More than one hundred prints are illustrated. Several are analyzed in depth thematically and iconographically.

Azaria Mbatha, a Zulu artist, conveys not only a sensibility for the suffering, isolation and endurance of people in his native South Africa, but also the hope that these conditions, which are universal to the human experience, will be seen as only one part, not the entirety of life. His work is imbued with poignancy, which evokes a cultural past that needs to be recovered and reclaimed. The all-powerful tiger -- the symbol Mbatha choses -- has within its heart the capacity to be redeemed. Other symbols and imagery from Zulu life and from Christianity recur in the thirty-six works reproduced here, which Mbatha carefully explains.

Azaria Mbatha chose a path of exile in Sweden, but even after 40 years the umbilical cord that ties him to his native South Africa remains strong. His Zulu heritage is central to his identity and to his work. So, too, is his Christianity. Born in 1941 into a Christian home, Mbatha first took up art in Ceza Mission Hospital, where he was a patient and soon after became part of the now renowned E.L.C. Art and Craft Center at Rorke’s Drift - - which he pointedly prefers to call by its indigenous name, Sandlwane. His early linocuts are infused with this autobiography and with Christian themes in the narrative Zulu tradition. Although he uses these prints to illustrate this book, he does not directly discuss his work, interestingly enough.

Mbatha’s is an unconventional autobiography, replete with tales of his ancestors, historical narratives of South Africa’s painful history, memories of childhood and life in exile. Being an exile, of course, frames his life story and becomes the prism and sounding-board through which he sees and hears his homeland. It is a stream of consciousness, non-linear presentation. The thread of his story that deals with his art is hard to pick out, scattered as it is in snippets here and there.

Mbatha’s retrospective take on the experience at Sandlwane is ambivalent. He certainly values the time he spent there and the friendships with other students and the mission teachers during the difficult apartheid period. (Mbatha does not refer to blacks and whites, but adopts a different color code: the blacks are the Blues, and the whites are the Greens). What he resents about Rorke’s Drift (Sandlwane) is that the Greens get all the credit for what they did there for the Blues, not with them. It was never an equal relationship. The Greens, he claims, used Sandlwane as an example of their “beneficent intervention,” and this rankles. Why the experiment ultimately failed, he doesn’t fully understand (see especially pages 300-310).

Reviewed by Julie L. McGee in African arts (Los Angeles) 39 (3) autumn 2006, pages 10, 90-91, 96; by Michael Chapman in Art South Africa (Cape Town) 4 (2) summer 2005, pages 86-87; by Laura Wright in African studies review (New Brunswick, NJ) 49 (3) December 2006, pages 49-57.

”What is a museum?” challenges Beninoise artist Meschac Gaba. His ongoing project is the creation of a conceptual/nomadic Museum of Contemporary African Art, as a critique of Eurocentric art and ethnographic museums and the commodification of African art. It has all the elements - - the architecture, the museum shop, the summer collection, the game room, the art and religion room, the discothèque, the restaurant, and the wedding room (where he got married). These installations/performance/interactive pieces are a total departure from the paintings Gaba was doing in Benin before he gained admission to the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam in 1996, as he explains in an extended interview with Chris Dercon. The only thing that carries over from Benin is the use of banknotes, now minus the paintings onto which they adhered, as commentary on devaluation and commodification. Biodata included.

Synthetic braided hair and extensions are the raw materials for Meschac Gaba’s exhibition “Tresses” at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2005. With this artificial hair he fabricates eighteen architectural sculptures. He sets up a dialogue of sorts between Manhattan and Cotonou through “skyscrapers” made of woven hair braids, each displayed atop a white female mannequin. Gaba also plays with decorating bank notes—dollars and CFA—images of his hair sculptures. This catalog includes essays by Christine Y. Kim and Lauri Firstenberg along with an interview with the artist.

Meschac Gaba’s exhibition cycle, The Museum of Contemporary African Art, is now presented “in a broader context and explores for the first time the artist’s entire oeuvre” (page 5). The exhibition was held at Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany (29 August - 15 November 2009); Museum De Paviljoens, Almere, Netherlands (25 April - 9 August 2009); and Centro Atlantico de Arte Moderno, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain (5 February - 28 March 2010).

Also included are his early works made in Bénin before emigrating to Amsterdam and his student works from the Rijksakademie period (1996).

Mariam Syowia Kyambi, Kenyan artist (German mother, Kenyan father), combines autobiographical elements with historical moments in Kenya’s history into her art. She works in multiple media—installation, performance, sculpture, assemblage, and video. Kyambi is influenced by women artists, such as Ana Mendieta or Louise Bourgeois. It is fair to say, she is a feminist artist. Kyambi completed her art education at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2002 and then launched into a very active career based in Nairobi, but very much an international presence.

Contents: Essays / by Annie E. Coombes -- Works / by Miriam Syowia Kyambi -- Interview / by Nabila Alibhai -- Curatorial work / by 3Collect.

This book features work which toured South Africa when Mntambo was named young artist of the year by Standard Bank in 2011. It includes an interview with Mntambo by Ruth Simbao, a piece by David Elliott, and full-page color illustrations of the work. Simbao’s interview focuses on spectacle and how the artist explores the idea. They begin with a discussion of bull-fighting, which was the subject of Mntambo’s Praça de Touros series and informed other works as well. Praça de Touros documents a performance by Mntambo in an empty, disused bull-fighting arena in Mozambique. Mntambo dressed in a traditional bull-fighter’s costume and a cowhide, becoming the bull-fighter, the bull and the audience. Mntambo takes apart and reconfigures the traditional spectacle, with a sense of it all already being over—the crowd has left, decades ago maybe, and the skin is all that’s left of the bull.

They also discuss ‘Africanicity’ as spectacle and the expectation that African art will above all be about Africa. Mntambo describes her interest in shaking off more narrow classifications of her subject matter, and searching for more open-ended interpretations. Simbao and Mntambo discuss the artist’s interest in playing with oppositions which society sometimes treats as fixed, such as masculine/feminine and human/animal. David Elliot looks at how Mntambo expresses the divided self and how the self as represented in her work never forms a coherent, settled form but continues to question and argue. Elliott also discusses Mntambo’s use of cowhide as her main medium, looking at its connections to death and ritual, and its significance across many cultures.

Artist and activist Thami Mnyele was killed in Botswana in a raid by the South African Defense Force in June 1985. He had been deeply embedded in the South African resistance and was a central figure in the MEDU Art Ensemble, established in exile in Gaborone by Wally Serote. This book and the accompanying exhibition recover and reconstruct the life and times of Thami Mnyele and MEDU through private archival sources, through those who knew him or were collaborators in MEDU. This is also a story of cultural resistance, through political art and graphics and drama and music and poetry. The culmination was the 1982 Culture and Resistance Symposium and Festival of the Arts, held in Gaborone, which is the subject of one chapter in this book. The first chapter focuses on Mnyele himself and his art, and the second, on the work and programs and personalities of MEDU Art Ensemble. A final chapter documents the horrific raid of June 14, 1985, and the aftermath. Mnyele was not the sole victim of that attack, but his death bestowed a martyr status. Poignant period photographs, archival documents as well as art work from the 1970s and 1980s fill any important gap in the history of 20th century South African art.

Critiqued by Pamela Allara in De arte (Pretoria) 82, 2010, pp. 83-88; reviewed by Vusumzi Vusi Melane in Mail and Guardian Friday (Johannesburg) August 12-18, 2016, pages 1,3.

Thami Mnyele’s life as an artist is inextricably tied up with the anti-apartheid struggles. He was shaped by the struggle. In fact, he lost his life as a victim, killed by the South African police in a raid while living in exile in Botswana. Diana Wylie, who knew Mnyele during the last five years of his life, reconstructs his story amid the fragmented sources, fading memories, and posthumous mythologizing.

An uneasy childhood in Alexandra, Johannesburg, and a coming of age without prospects, Mnyele’s world was overshadowed by the increasingly repressive South African government. He aspired to be an artist but lacked training and opportunities. He was befriended by writer and poet Mongane Wally Serote and gradually began to meet like-minded people who supported and encouraged him in various ways. He studied briefly at Rorke’s Drift, but eventually went into exile in Gaborone, Botswana, in 1979. There Mnyele became part of MEDU Art Ensemble where he could put his artistic talent to use toward the cause, making posters and drawings and teaching art. Exile offered little comfort and less security, as he was drawn deeper into militant ANC politics. The end for Mnyele and eleven others came in a burst of gunfire in June 1985 in the notorious Gaborone Raid.

This book is not an art history but rather the story of an artist and activist and the turbulent decades in which he lived. It does, however, reproduce many of Mnyele’s drawings and posters.

Congolese painter Mode Muntu (1940-1985) was one of the Lubumbashi artists trained by Laurent Moonens at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Lubumbashi. He joined the academy at the early age of 14, in 1954, where he became a dedicated painter. A modest man, he was more interested in painting than selling paintings. In the 1960s, when Katanga erupted politically and militarily, life was difficult for the artists. Mode Muntu had to seek other employment, but never gave up painting. Mode never married and died of dysentery in 1985.

The author of this thorough and thoughtful biography, Michael de Plaen (1979- ), first met Mode in the early 1980s in the Musée de Lubumbashi. De Plaen’s father, Guy de Plaen, was director of this museum from 1972-1990. Much of the archival material and photography incorporated in the Mode Muntu story belongs to the De Plaen family.

Although Mode Muntu is mentioned in numerous publications about the Lubumbashi artists, he has never before been studied so carefully and extensively. The portfolio of paintings presented in the book is as complete as possible and is arranged chronologically to show the artist’s progression. De Plaen tracked down the artist’s work from many museums and private collections in Belgium and beyond. Mode Muntu’s subject matter and style of painting reveal elongated human figures, birds, snakes and fish. The paintings all have intense background of dots and other repetitive elements that cover every inch of the canvases.

The introductory essays offer detailed history of Lubumbashi art school, known as the ‘Hangar.’ The key expatriates in this story are Moonens and his predecessor, Pierre Romain-Desfossés (1887-1954), who not only taught art but also promoted the artists through exhibitions of their work in Kinshasa, Belgium and elsewhere.

Mohammed Khadda’s 1962 painting, Les casbahs ne s’assiègent pas, means “The casbahs cannot be put under siege, or hostile encirclement.” Khadda’s paintings reflect his artistic philosophy and his ideological views. He also engaged in national politics and culture. In spite of communist leanings, Khadda deplored radicalism and intolerance, as well as what he called la démagogie ésthetique (aesthetic demagogy) which had become the official policy of the Algerian authorities in the 1970s. In his search for authenticity Khadda integrated all the artistic traditions of his time, particularly folk art (Aouchem) and Islamic illuminations, as well as prevailing modern trends. He favored free environment for intellectual and artistic development.

This catalog presents Khadda’s work at an exhibition held in Belfort, France, October 2012-January 2103. The exhibition was a fitting tribute to an artistic life that developed in France and matured in Algeria. It also revealed Khadda’s aspirations for dialogue, openness, and self-examination.

The artist’s wife, Naget Belkaid-Khadda, contributed to the catalog. Art historians Denise Brahimi analyses Khadda’s paintings, focusing on his abstract style, palette colors and use of signs and letters. Anthropologist François Pouillon looks at Khadda’s art works through the artist’s own writings, particularly, Élélmemts pour un art nouveau, and Feuillets e´pars lie´s. Although the exhibition features only paintings and drawings, the catalog adds a checklist of his other artwork—posters, murals, monumental sculptures, tapestry, and illustration of books. A detailed biographical profile is appended.

Moses Tladi is one of the unsung pioneers among black South African artists. His story is told here by the granddaughter of Herbert Read, who employed Tladi. Lloyd’s is a project of recuperation of the unknown Tladi, whom she never met but had heard of from childhood. It is also a story of Lloyd’s personal journey of discovery.

Tladi was a gardener at Lokahoek, the Read home in Johannesburg, and his paintings of the gardens and house are central to the story, as are other landscape paintings the Reads acquired. The dates and facts of Tladi’s life were obscure at the start of this project, but Lloyd takes the reader carefully - - a little too slowly at times – in peeling back layers to piece together this lost life. She tracks down the Tladi family; she excavates archives and libraries; she interviews at people and descendants of mentors and patrons of Tladi. Not a conventional art history as the reader has to persevere to really learn something about Tladi amid all Lloyd’s personal narrative, but fascinating in its own way. Includes reproductions of all known paintings by Tladi.

Moyo Ogundipe, born 1948 in Ado Ekiti, Nigeria, is “firmly anchored to the Yoruba traditional biosphere.” He studied at the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) and at the Maryland Institute of College of Art, in Baltimore. For fifteen years he lived in the United States, as a political exile from Nigeria, but returned home in 2008. Ogundipe is primarily a painter of large colorful canvasses. Lots of pink & blue, green & yellow cover the surface, exhibiting a true horror vacui. The paintings illustrated here are mainly from the late 1990s to date, many from the artist’s collection. This is his first major retrospective with substantial essays.

Contents: Syntheses of cultures and sensibilities /O.I. Pogoson, A.O. Akande --Nigerian artists reinterpreting Hellenic images /Peju Layiwola --An Egungun aesthetic: a critical study of Moyo Ogundipe's paintings from the United States and Nigeria /Janine Sytsma --Forest of a thousand wonders: the mid-career paintings of Moyo Ogundipe /Niyi Osundare --Moyo Ogundipe: neo-nomadic art venture /Moyo Okediji --The ferment of Moyo Ogundipe's talent /Bode Sowande.

See also Ogundipe's earlier catalog: Kaleidoscopes: new work by Moyo Ogundipe by Janine Sytsma and others. Lagos, Nigeria: Terra Kulture Art Gallery, 2008.

The photographic series of South African photographer/artist Zwelethu Mthethwa featured in this Italian exhibition focuses on themes of mother and child, sacred homes and rebirth. All the photographs date from 1999-2000 and are in color, vivid, bright color. These shots of peoples inside their homes, on their own terrain, posed as they chose to present themselves, is an avenue that Mthethwa has been exploring for several years. The visual results reconstruct “an area of South Africa that is cut off from globalization” but has cultural integrity of its own.

South African performance artist Samson Mudzunga found his métier following the surge of popularily in the “discovery” of Venda sculptors in South Africa in the late 1980s. Mudzunga, a wood sculptor, spent most of his working life in Johannesburg in a succession of menial jobs. Around 1990, having been sacked from his last job, he tried selling sculptures and staging exhibitions. By 1996, he started staging performances based on traditional Venda rituals – funerals, marriages – both in his home area in Limpopo and in urban gallery settings. According to Coates, Mudzunga is “the ultimate devil’s advocate: interrogating and using both urban and rural systems, he moves within and between both with subversive intent” (page 12).

South African artist and writer Selby Mvusi is a rather mysterious figure. He led a nomadic existence on several continents during adulthood, and he died relatively young—at 38. Elza Miles has made a tremendous contribution in pulling back the curtain on Mvusi by searching archives, reaching out to people who knew Mvusi, and fitting all the known jigsaw pieces into a coherent and poignant narrative.

She presents an inventory of Mvusi’s artworks before she launches into his biography. Equally important, she compiled his scattered writings—poems, lectures, essays, and conference papers. Like she has done in earlier books, Elza Miles brings to life a black South African artist whose story has long been hidden and overlooked.

CD-ROM contents: Letter to Peter Clarke, 26 August 1956 -- Letter to Peter Clarke, 2 October 1956 --Design development in Africa today : problems and programming 1964 -- Visual perception 1966-7 -- Problem growth or growth problem 1967 -- The arts : an introduction to appreciation 1960 -- Africa and the United States 1961 -- Toward a contemporary art in Africa 1942 -- A general survey of current research in art education 1962 -- An exhibition of industrially made goods 1963 -- The things we buy 1964 -- The education of industrial designers in low-income countries 1964 -- Perspectives on industrial design education In low-income countries n.d -- Industrial design in low-income countries : principles and programmes n.d -- Social and cultural dynamics 1965 -- Craft production today n.d -- Standardisation n.d -- Untitled writing n.d -- Current revolution and future prospects 1966 -- Urbanisation and industrialisation 28 April 1966 -- Development and control n.d -- Structure 1966/7 -- Educating designers today 16 September 1965 -- Industrial design in Africa 1969.

George Velaphi Mzimba paints evocative portraits which are “immaculately conceived, painstakingly drafted and beautifully painted.” Largely self-taught, Mzimba did take art classes with Dan Rakgoathe and Bill Ainslie. The Everard Read Gallery in Johannesburg features thirty-one color paintings, mainly portraits in this five-year retrospective exhibition.

Naguib, a mid-career Mozambican painter, shows recent paintings and mixed media works in this 2008 exhibition in Maputo.

The journey of the griffin illustrates Moataz’s creativity and artistic philosophy. The title refers to a griffin featured in an exhibition at Villa Pacchiani Centro Espositivo in 2013. It is a reproduction of a bronze griffin that sat on the top of the town church since the 12th century until it was removed and replaced by a cement reproduction. Showing his ability to reach across cultural divides and to tap into local imaginary, Moataz used leather to construct a copy of the griffin, including its elaborate designs and Arabic calligraphy. Like the migrant workers at the local leather factory, the original griffin is an object of art that came from another time and from a different place, but is still capable of inspiring and giving universal meaning to a changing world. The richness and beauty of the griffin speaks to the depth and power of Moataz’s creativity and the sensibilities that shaped it, especially Sufism, an influence he received from his uncle.

Moataz brings his highly refined aesthetics to the multi-media he uses (installation, video performances, calligraphy, and porcelain), not only to please the viewers, but also to engage their awareness of oppression and injustice around the world.

Born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1961, Moataz studied art in Old Cairo and become known locally. His work Ear of mud another of dough (2001) launched his artistic success. He made his entry in the international art scene in 2001 after winning the Grand Prix of the International Cairo Biennial, followed by receiving the Biennale Prize at Dak’art in Senegal.

Iba N’Diaye from Saint-Louis, Senegal, went to Europe in 1948 to learn “the craft of painting,” as he describes it. He stuck with the belief that an artist must learn to draw first and foremost, no matter what his ultimate style or metier. As a traditionalist, he found himself a bit at odds with the vortex of Negritude in which he found himself during the heyday of Senghorian dominance.

In a revealing interview in this catalog, N’Diaye talks reflectively about his painting career, his inspirations and convictions, his views on art movements and other artists. The paintings illustrated in the catalog are primarily recent ones dating from 1999-2001. The themes are familiar. N’Diaye returns repeatedly to re-explore jazz musicians, portraits, landscapes, and Tabaski, the sacrifice of the lamb.

Okwui Enwezor introduces N’Diaye – does he need introducing? – beginning with the painting “Juan de Pareja menacé par des chiens” (1986), which features in the seminal Africa explores exhibition (1991). Franz-W. Kaiser offers a tangential essay on Primitivism and authenticity.

Iba N'Diaye is the grand old man of Senegalese visual arts. Although he has lived and painted in France for almost fifty years, his ties to his homeland remain strong, and he has spent extended periods in Senegal. The most noteworthy of these was when he was called home in 1959 by President Senghor to found a new school of art, the Ecole nationale des arts. He stayed until 1967.

The œuvre of N'Diaye reflects a lifetime of studio explorations in form, style, and theme, which weave in and out rather than progressing in simple linear fashion. Common themes in his work are portraits, women in the market, jazz musicians, the courtryside, and "the cry of the continent." The text in this book is spliced together with excerpts from previous catalog essays and commentary on the work of N'Diaye. There is also an interview with the artist, a photo-shoot in his Paris studio, and a new essay by Mario Cappone. A biographical resume is included.

Reviewed by Mark DeLancey in African book publishing record (Oxford) 23 (1) 1997, page 15.

Ndidi Dike has emerged after 20-plus years as one of Nigeria’s pre-eminent artists through perseverance and true grit. She has ignored or done end-runs around the obstacles and critiques facing women artists in Nigeria. This 2008 retrospective of her work—which appears to have been originally planned for 2004—showcases her sculptures, paintings, and mixed media works, though most of the works illustrated are from 2004-2006.

Dike assembled a distinguished roster of colleagues and commentators to contribute essays to the catalog: Jahman Anikulapo, Obiora Udechukwu, Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie, Kunle Filani, C. Krydz Ikwuemesi, Uchechukwu Nwosu, and Onyema Offoedu-Okeke—although there is a fair amount of overlap in these texts.

Hylton Nel grew up in the Northern Cape in South Africa. After studying fine art in Grahamstown and in Antwerp in the early 1960s, he spent a decade between England and South Africa before returning permanently in 1974. Nel describes himself as an “artist-potter” which aptly refers to his interest in painted imagery as well as in form and function. Over the past four decades he has developed a style of work that is rich in references to the decorative arts and literary and art historical sources. His plates, bowls, vases, plaques and figurative pieces are idiosyncratically decorated with witty – and sometimes poignant – line drawings and script. His imagery ranges from penises to Madonnas, and from cats through to angels, and his quotes are drawn from poetry and the daily press as well as his observations of the world around him. He presently lives on the outskirts of Calitzdorp, a small town in the Klein Karoo – from the cover.

Reviewed by Sue Williamson in Art South Africa (Cape Town) 2 (4) winter 2004, page 89; by Wilma Cruise in De arte (Pretoria) 71, April 2005, pages 72-75.

This is a companion volume to the 2003 catalog (preceding entry), anticipating the occasion of Hylton Nel’s 70th birthday in 2011. The ceramics featured are his most recent works, which are as whimsical, naughty, imaginative, and omnivorous as ever. Cats, reminiscent of reborn Egyptian cat mummies, remain one of his favorite themes, as do dinner plates with pithy painted texts, e.g., “Champagne for my real friends.”

Reviewed by Melanie Hillebrand in De arte (Pretoria) 84, 2011, pages 109-111.

Collage artist Sam Nhlengthwa’s successful career spans the critical decades of apartheid brutality, the struggle for democracy, and the Mandela years. His work mirrors that historical arc in South Africa's history. Born in 1955, Nhlengthwa attended the Johannesburg Art Foundation, where he studied with Bill Ainslie, and later went to Rorke’s Drift E. L. C. Art and Craft Centre. He got a day job at the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) as a set designer, but continued making art on his own time. He participated in the Thupela workshop and was one of the first artists ensconced in the Bag Factory art studios. In 1993 he was given the Standard Bank Young Artist Award.

For this book in the Goodman Gallery Editions, the editor has assembled a distinguished set of writers and admirers of Nhlengthwa, including among others Nadine Gordimer, Robert Hodgins, and David Koloane. Included also are an interview with the artist and more than 150 color reproductions of his works.

Nicholas Hlobo, “Xhosa son, Eastern Cape homeboy, gay cosmopolitan, artworld rising star,” (page 10) is inspired and motivated by his own ethnic identity and sexuality, but in ways that conceal as much as they reveal. Chosen the Standard Bank Young Artist of 2009, Hlobo has only been exhibiting his installations since 2002. His first solo exhibition was in 2006. He also does performance pieces using installsions. Responses to his art are offered by Mark Gevisser, Kopano Ratele and American curator Jen Mergel.

Nicholas Hlobo’s art is transgressive, empowering, celebratory and performative, yet remains open to engage the viewer. His hand-stitched “drawings” and soft sculptures both literally and figuratively suggest binding together and healing. His work is deeply embedded in Xhosa culture, though the references are not always recognized by viewers. His performance pieces are animated sculptures (“assisting his sculptures to move”), usually done in galleries, not on the street. The catalog essays are by Gavin Jantjes, Kerryn Greenberg, Jan-Erik Lundström. The exhibition was held at the Museet for samtidskunst, 4 March-29 May, 2011.

Nicholas Mukomberanwa is one of the best known of Zimbabwe's stone sculptors. Encouraged by Frank McEwen, Mukomberanwa began to seriously sculpt in the early 1960s, and his artistic career has been on the rise ever since. In this tribute to Mukomberanwa, Roy Guthrie contributes a short biography; includes excerpts from reviews and commentary by other critics, and the artist himself discusses his work. The bulk of the volume, however, is comprised of photographs of Mukomberanwa's sculpture, all of which is identified by title and dated. Mukomberanwa works in several stones, most commonly springstone and serpentine.

This is a companion video to the book The woman with the artistic brush: a life history of Yoruba batik artist Nike Davies (1995), both researched and written by Kim Marie Vaz, who takes a decidedly feminist perspective in both book and video. She intertwines Nike’s life and art with Yoruba deities and beliefs, particularly traditional attitudes toward women - - women as mothers, as witches, as deities, as market women. With Nike on camera, it is a tell-all confessional playing out dominant feminist issues - - abuse, humiliation, ostracism, female circumcision, denial of opportunities. The difficulties Nike had in starting the Nike Centre for Arts and Culture are but one example of what she has had to overcome in her life. Throughout the film, there is a kaleidoscopic display of Nike’s colorful batiks.

The Nike Centre for Art and Culture in Oshogbo, Nigeria, is a haven to many of the young artists brought into Nike Olaniyi’s entrepreneurial orbit. The art school, gallery, cultural troupe, and ultimate tourist destination that she has created builds of the name that Oshogbo already had as a town of artists. But in Nigeria of the 1990s, survival is a real concern, and artists who can successfully market themselves internationally are at a greater advantage. Jerde, in doing the research for this dissertation, apprenticed herself as an indigo dyer at the Nike Center, and her experiences are recounted in a highly personal manner.

Nja Mahdaoui (also spelling Naja Mahdawi) does not paint, he writes. So says the artist, characterizing his work. Indeed Arabic calligraphy fills his paintings and graphics; the strokes can be delicate or bold, stark or dense, but always expressive. Born in 1937 in Tunis, Mahdaoui studied graphic arts in Rome and has traveled and exhibited widely in Europe. This book is chiefly illustrated with a slight essay by Edouard J. Maunick, serving as an introduction to the artist and his work.

The book is divided into three main sections, ‘Early Works’, ‘Calligrams’ and ‘Graphemes’. The section on early works includes Mahdaoui’s extremely detailed ink drawings on paper, use of found objects, oil paintings and photomontages. This section charts the move in Mahdaoui’s work from more representational images towards explorations of pure color and line, and the use of gestural and calligraphic marks. Also included in this section are essays on Mahdaoui’s work by Moncef Badday, Barbara Arnhold, Michel Tapié de Céleyran and Martina Cagnati. The ‘Calligrams’ section includes Mahdaoui’s screenprints and tapestries, as well as the bodies of work Calligrams on parchment and Calligrams on papyrus. Charbel Dagher writes on Mahdaoui’s calligraphy, looking at what aspects of the tradition Mahdaoui makes use of, and what he discards or distorts. ‘Graphemes’ focuses on these works in colored ink and gold on canvas and paper, and includes interviews with the artist by Normand Biron and Myrna Ayad.

Noria Mabasa is a self-taught, dream-inspired artist from the Venda region of northern South Africa. Her art-making grew out of her dreams and visions and continues to be engendered by them. Her clay figurines were first noticed in the mid 1970s and sold successfully. She advanced from clay modeling to wood carving, an unconventional medium for a woman in Venda tradition. This marked an important shift in the iconography and scale of her work. Her work is deeply rooted in Venda culture and ritual. She has contributed significantly to Venda Village, a recreated village site populated with her figures of people and animals. Mabasa now receives commissions for large public sculptures in prominent urban sites in Pretoria, Johannesburg, and elsewhere. Her work is also in demand on the art gallery circuit and in museum collections. Her rise to fame has coincided with the opening up of South Africa, and she has successfully negotiated the vagaries and competitions of the art market. However, given the naive character of her work, she may now find herself “re-classified” as a visionary, intuitive artist not quite of international standard.

Reviewed by Anitra Nettleton in De Arte (Pretoria) no. 69, 2004, pages 100-103.