1959
oil on canvas
32.8 x 46 cm (12 5/8 x 18 in.)
signed and dated lower right



LOT NOTES
One of South Africa`s most acclaimed artists, Gerard Sekoto spent most of his life in a self-imposed exile in France. Having begun to achieve fame while still living in Johannesburg in the 1940s, Sekoto`s candid images of black life during the Apartheid earned particular praise for bringing attention to the everyday injustices without conveying a sense of desperation or victimization on the behalf of the author. In fact, while Sekoto was contemplating moving to Europe, his friend John Koenakeefe Mohl attempted to convince him to stay in South Africa and remain an important voice within the country. Despite this, the call of Paris, or mecca as Sekoto described it in his 1969 autobiography, proved too great to resist. Having seen his friend Ernest Mancoba lead a much more successful and less constrained career in Europe, and more significantly, believing it as a way to escape the oppression of Apartheid, Sekoto left for Paris where he remained for the rest of his life.

This Parisian Scene is an early piece, painted just a bit over a decade after Sekoto emigrated, and only six years after his first successful international exhibition. The work shows much of the same spontaneity that his earlier, South African, pieces were praised for and propelled his success. It was only around this time that Sekoto was able to give up his job as a nighttime musician in a club and turn his focus entirely to his painting.