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Indepth Arts News:
"Johannes Meintjes 1923 -1980"
2010-07-18 until 2010-08-28
Sasol Art Museum, University of Stellenbosch
Stellenbosch, ,
ZA South Africa
An exhibition of the South African artist, author and historian, Johannes Meintjes (1923-1980) is presented at the Sasol Art Museum, Stellenbosch University, and open to the public from 18 July to 28 August 2010. Meintjes was a painter that enjoyed public support for his art since an early age and also received international acclaim as an author and historian. All of these aspects of his oeuvre will be highlighted at the exhibition. The fame he enjoyed as a 21 year old artist is unequaled in the South African history of art. Esme Berman wrote in her authoritative Art & Artists of South Africa that "the spectacular suddenness with which Johannes Meintjes catapulted to the headlines during the last years of WW2 is a phenomenon seldom equalled in SA cultural history. Before he was 22 years old the intense young artist enjoyed the kind of public adulation which was later reserved for youthful idols of the pop-music world".
Johannes Meintjes died in 1980 and had established himself as a major South African painter and writer. Apart from numerous articles and smaller literary works, he had published 35 books, amongst them authoritative works on South African history.
He had painted more than a thousand canvases, produced dozens of sculptures and exhibited in all South Africa's major galleries - sometimes alone and sometimes in the company of artists such as Alexis Preller, JH Pierneef, Gerard Sekoto, Irma Stern, Maggie Laubser and Walter Battiss.
Meintjes once said: 'My vision originates from the soil of Africa and I have given it in a personal statement which may find a response in the heart and imagination of another generation.'
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