Early paintings from Europe
By: Ernest Mancoba
Publisher: SMAC Art Gallery
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Stellenbosch [South Africa]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 16
Subjects: Exhibitions; South African Painting; Art collections; Abstract Painting; Expatriate artists
Description: Ernest Mancoba was born in 1904 near Boksburg. He left South Africa for Paris in 1938, where he met and married the Danish artist Sonja Ferlov. In 1947 he moved with his family to Denmark. In Europe he exhibited with the progressive COBRA movement, a European avant-garde movement that stood for spontaneous and involuntary expression during the years of its existence. These paintings are presumably from 1948-1951 and are most significant in showing an early exploratory phase in his imaginative development as a black artist working self consciously in a modernist abstract idiom. This is a unique and very valuable collection. SMAC is proud to be able to present these paintings this year. Ernest Mancoba died in 2002.
Notes: Catalogue of the exhibition at Stellenbosch Modern and Contemporary Gallery (SMAC), 18 June - 31 August, 2008 which forms part of Abstract Art from the Isolation years: Part II.

"This collection of Ernest Mancoba paintings belonged to the late Doug Crutchfield (1938-1989), a well-known African-American ballet dancer and choreographer who emigrated from America to resettle permanently in Sweden"--P. 3 of cover.