Sam Nhlengethwa, Glimpses of the 50's and 60's (2004)

Sam Nhlengethwa is one of South Africa's foremost artists. Born in 1955, he studied at Rorkes Drift and the Johannesburg Art Foundation. Sam Nhlengethwa was awarded the Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year award in 1994, the year South Africa held its first democratic elections and freedom was won for all its people. Nhlengethwa has successfully exhibited all over the world from Senegal to New York and Cologne. His work is largely figurative and he explores themes that are close to his heart such as the plight of mineworkers, jazz and the physical space of contemporary Africa.In his prints and paintings Sam Nhlengethwa uses overlays of techniques such as collage painting, drawing and photography. His fine sense of colour and form lend an abstract quality to his work.

Sam Nhlenegthwa has been included in many contemporary South African art publications and his work can be found in leading South African and International collections.

Artists Statement:
"The title of this series is 'Glimpses of the Fifties and Sixties'. I have chosen to work in the style to which I have become accustomed (collage) and to also explore my printing via the photogravure process. I think one of the reasons I like this process is that it has an element of collage in it, but the process is more physically involved and delicate. It entails digitising an initial collage and working through at least five plates before even considering the trial print to be used for the series.

I sourced material from the Drum magazine archives and I also looked through my own family albums. The use of my own archive was important because I wanted to reflect an intimacy and a familiarity that would make the images accessible. Looking through the albums I reminisced about growing up in my grandmother's house and how I always found the dining room with the wedding photograph so intriguing. I also recalled enjoying a softball match in Westonaria (a small mining community on the West Rand) amidst the many dompas and curfew laws. Today these images have now been revived in the music videos of Mafikizolo and the 'Stoned Cherry' fashion label. I think I'm lucky in the sense that I have used art as an outlet for the frustrations I encountered during this time. My visual expression through painting was therapeutic and has now been transformed into what I believe to be a historical retrospective". - Sam Nhlengethwa, Exhibition press release 2004

A series of prints which are all the same size, printed by hand as colour photolithographs from pre-sensitised aluminium plates.


The first image shows what the prints look like positioned on the paper, the images following it focus on the image and have been photographed without the paper edge of the print