Last month the Gerard Sekoto Foundation took the spirit of great art to the village of Ga- Mphahlele
Pule waga Mabe July 29 will be remembered for a long time by pupils in the remote village of Ga- Mphahlele in the Northern Province who, last weekend, got the opportunity to explore their talents while playing with paint, copying the great works that artist Gerard Sekoto produced in his lifetime. Ga-Mphahlele is known for educating legends – like author and academic Es’kia Mphahlele, who travelled to the village that has his name in order to facilitate the workshop. Mphahlele’s home in nearby Lebowa-kgomo has a collection of Sekoto’s paintings. The two met in Paris in 1961 during Mphahlele’s life in exile. The initiative forms part of the brief of the Gerard Sekoto Foundation, under the co- ordination of its co-founder Barbara Lindop, which has undertaken to develop art in rural areas using Sekoto’s paintings. Sekoto’s last testament holds that his work should be used to develop art education in South Africa. This was the second Gerard Sekoto Foundation outreach programme in a once-neglected area. A team of three renowned artists from Fordsburg’s Bag Factory art-making studio – namely Pat Mautloa, Sam Nhlengethwa and David Koloane – made it all happen. The children sketched copies of some of Sekoto’s better-known paintings on paper, and the three artists transferred the outlines on to the walls of Matsobane Primary School and Lehlage High School. Then the pupils took over again, largely on their own, with the occasional word of advice from the artists. Mautloa believes that all children can become Gerard Sekotos of the future. He thinks that if people’s arts vision is widened, arts will develop. Nhlengethwa’s work resembles Sekoto’s in many ways. Both artists loved jazz and both were inspired by their visits to Senegal, although years apart. “We both handle sketches the same way,” Nhlengethwa says. “The power to create is present in all of us,” says Koloane, one of the fortunate artists who met Sekoto in person. A fourth artist, Amos Letsoalo, who studied fine arts at the Johannesburg Arts Foundation in Saxonwold, came along for the workshop. Letsoalo, who works at the Gertrude Posel Gallery on the Wits University campus, originally came up with the idea of Ga-Mphahlele as a suitable venue for this workshop. “We want to uplift Gerard Sekoto’s work by reaching out to areas that are not taken care of,” Letsoalo says. The Gerard Sekoto Foundation came into being in 1993 shortly after the artist’s death, but became effective in 1999 after the organisation, with government support, negotiated with the French government for the repatriation of his works. Sekoto lived most of his years in France, where he died. Lindop, the present co-founder of the Gerard Sekoto Foundation, met the artist for the first time in 1988. “For five years we communicated six times a week about his life,” Lindop says. Today, Lindop is at the forefront of preserving Sekoto’s memory, and is involved in increasing awareness about his life’s work. During what amounted to a three-day workshop, the children of Ga-Mphahlele gained a measure of art literacy as they put the final touches to their murals. Although not entirely accurate renderings of Sekoto’s images, the new artists benefited greatly from following in the brushstrokes of the great man. The next Sekoto showcase will take place in Sophiatown, in Johannesburg, where Sekoto lived before he left the country. Additional projects are expected to take place in Middleburg, where Sekoto was born, in Cape Town’s District Six and in Eastwood, Mpumalanga – the last place where Sekoto lived before he left for exile. For information about the Gerard Sekoto Foundation: Tel: (011) 788 3411