Page 50 - Studio International - September 1965

Ceci I Skotnes and The Angst of Africa

by Walter Battiss

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Cecil Skotnes. the artist. is married with two children and lives and Johannesburg. Skotnes eventually found himself in the cutting
works in Johannesburg in the Transvaal. He is the son of a of woodblocks that he coloured.
missionary and a Canadian mother and was born in East London In the end. whatever inducements suggest certain directions of
in the Cape Province. South Africa. thirty nine years ago. fulfilment. the realisation of an artist's best creative self is his
During World War Two. Skotnes served in the South African own very personal affair. This move to realise himself is to
forces in Italy and at the conclusion of the war. he studied art in essential loneliness for he must determine every step since art.
Florence. However. the first serious influences in his art came later like death. has no proxy: Skotnes pulled away to loneliness.
in London when Skotnes saw the sculptures of Henry Moore and The new graphic work Skotnes then produced earned for him
Barbara Hepworth. of which he still retains very clear impressions. a place on the Biennales of Venice and Sao Paulo. Finally,
The meaning for Skotnes in these works of Moore and Hepworth Skotnes came to his most recent large works on wood which he
was the meaning that the primitive. especially the primitive of calls 'incised paintings· and these came through his murals for
Africa. had for the European artist. churches in South Africa. carried out in sgraffito and inlaid
In South Africa. after completing his B.A. Honours in Fine Arts plaster techniques.
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Nudes m Landscape at the University of the Witwatersrand. Skotnes became an art These new incised paintings on wood make up the Skotnes 1965
36x60in. teacher at the Polly Street Centre. Johannesburg. and in develop­ exhibition at the Grosvenor Gallery, London. It has come about
2 ing the art here he animated a remarkably virile African art because Mr. Eric Estorick. the Director of this gallery. had recently
The Censors movement in South Africa. visited South Africa and looking around with a roving eye of quick
60 X 48 in. At first. Skotnes gave a great deal of himself to the students of the discernment discovered Skotnes as one of the artists he wanted.
3 Centre to get very little back for himself until one day he found a The large panels of Skotnes are conceived from the start as
Marrvr Zulu sculptor. Sydney Kumalo. amongst his pupils who could be 'incised paintings· for there is never any intention to make prints
48x48,n.
approached on both an aesthetic and an intellectual level. from them. Though similar in size they are very different in their
4 Sydney Kumalo with his talent and his brain helped Skotnes to cutting and treatment of colour from the monumental -Holzschnitt
The Conference
48 X 60 in. give the Polly Street Centre a new life. and a contemporary prints of H. A. P. Grieshaber at Documenta 1964 at Kassel.
creative climate was established. the reward Skotnes deserved. Because these incised paintings are something new both in
Outside of his teaching. as an artist discovering himself. Skotnes conception and scale they have attracted a great deal of attention
had started off as a sculptor. had then moved to oil painting until in South Africa and there are already oblique quotations of
All incised pa1r111ngs on wood are
at the Grosvenor Gal:ery, London later. supported by the prophetic conviction of Egan Guenther of Skotnes in the work of the younger artists.
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