Art training for black South Africans in early twentieth-century South Africa: obstacles and access

Azaria Mbatha, The Revelation of St John (1965), linocut print on paper, 376x680mm.

With the South Africa Act of 1909, the various provinces of South Africa were unified into one nation. For artists, the quest was now to discover the identity and vision that made them quintessentially South African. How did their work and vision differ from that of, say, German, Dutch, French or British artists? What kind of artistic identity was particular to artists living on the southern tip of Africa? 

A critical shortage of art-education institutions within the country made this problem acute. Before the establishment of the Michaelis School of Fine Arts at the University of Cape Town in the 1920s, there were few opportunities for adult art education anywhere in South Africa. (1) A few technical colleges, founded on the model of Britain’s South Kensington system, could be found in some of the larger urban areas, but the art education they offered was very basic. In the absence of anything better, and even after the establishment of the Michaelis School, most aspirant South African artists completed their training in Europe, returning with some awareness of new trends but little that marked them out as identifiably South African.

The problem was even more acute for the nation’s aspirant black artists who, in the early years of the twentieth century, had yet fewer opportunities for a professional art education. (2) The first Fine Arts department within a black university (education being segregated along racial lines during the apartheid period) was only established in the 1970s, at the University of Fort Hare. Before this time, black schoolchildren and adult learners found what little art education was available largely at the Christian mission schools and teacher-training centres. 

One of these was the Diocesan Teachers Training College at the Anglican mission of Grace Dieu near Polokwane (then Pietersburg). Here both Gerard Sekoto and Ernest Mancoba trained and were introduced to art through the inspired teaching which had been inaugurated in the 1920s by Edward Paterson (graduate of London’s Central School of Arts and Crafts) and Grace Anderson (Associate of the Royal College of Art), teaching which continued into the 1930s.

The emphasis at Grace Dieu was on woodcarving, and much of the work produced by the students was decorative carving for interiors and furnishing, although freestanding independent sculptural work was produced also. And while the tutors brought with them ideas from their own British art training, their students soon began to forge a style that was recognizably of Africa, drawing on longstanding vernacular traditions in carving and decoration. The human body was central to much of the work, but it was a body that was monumental, abstracted and imbued with a kind of timeless stoicism.

Outside of the mission school system, a rare early initiative in art education was the Polly Street Art Centre of the 1950s, based in the thriving city of Johannesburg and driven by the vision and energy of artist Cecil Skotnes. Despite meagre government funding, the Centre was flourishing by the mid-50s and many future black artists trained and then went on to teach there before its demise in the 1960s. 

The Polly Street Centre was independent of the Christian missions but, in addition to Grace Dieu, the missions sponsored other important art-education initiatives such as the art department at the Ndaleni Teacher Training College, near Richmond in KwaZulu Natal. A number of inspired teachers from South Africa and Britain contributed to making this an important centre of black art education in the 1950s. The fact that it was primarily dedicated to training art teachers rather than artists helped spread its influence, for a number of its graduates took their training into the field of school education, encouraging the importance of art training for children.

Another very important contribution to art education for black students was made by the Evangelical Lutheran Church Art and Craft Centre, known popularly as Rorke’s Drift (its location in KwaZulu Natal),  which was founded in 1963. This Centre was born of the work of Swedish missionaries and flourished under the stewardship of Swedish-trained artists Ulla and Peder Gowenius. A weaving workshop came first, followed by workshops in pottery, textiles and print-making. By the late 60s, a flourishing school of art and crafts was in place, encouraging its students to rediscover vernacular African traditions and ways of seeing through their chosen medium. Of Rorke’s Drift’s many distinguished graduates, Azaria Mbatha is one of the most famous – a master printmaker whose complex linocuts brought a specifically African vision to Biblical stories. 

If the nation’s white artists had struggled to find a specifically South African way of seeing, the same was not true for its black artists who forged a very identifiable visual idiom in the face of restricted educational access. But they faced restricted access to the world of galleries and museums too, making it difficult to pursue their artistic careers professionally. It was only in the 1960s that the country’s National Gallery purchased its first work by a black artist – Gerard Sekoto’s Street Scene. (3) In the years following, the acquisition of many more works by graduates of Grace Dieu, Ndaleni, Polly Street, Rorke’s Drift and other such centres marked a start in redressing the imbalance. 

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(1)  A. Tietze, ‘The attainment of a true eye and a correct hand’: drawing, art training institutions and theories of art education in Cape Town, 1860-1926, de arte, 89, 2014, 4-17 and A. Tietze, The art of design: curriculum policy and the fine art vs design debate at Michaelis School of Fine Art, 1925-1972, de arte, 91, 2015, 4-17.

(2)  Elizabeth Rankin has documented aspects of this history in a number of publications. See E. Rankin and E. Miles, The role of the missions in art education in South Africa, Africa Insight, 22, 1, 1992, 34-48, P. Hobbs and E. Rankin, Rorke’s Drift: Empowering Prints, Double Storey, Cape Town, 2003, and E. Rankin, Lonely road: formative episodes in the development of black artists in early twentieth-century South Africa, in J. Carman (ed), Visual Century: South African Art in Context, vol 2, 1945-1976, Wits University Press, Johnnesburg, 2011 . 

(3) A. Tietze, A History of the Iziko South African National Gallery: Reflections on Art and National Identity, UCT Press, Cape Town, 2017, 127-129.