Welgemeend is privileged to host an exhibition by artist Nel Erasmus from 5 September to 5 October 2018.
Please join us on Wednesday, 5 September 2018 at 18:00 for an opening cocktail event. Kindly RSVP by Monday, 3 September 2018.
Heildronk
Na die skildery The Toast (2008) deur Nel Erasmus
’n Heildronk op jou dwingende dagtaak
om die nag se ontwykende beeld
daagliks besield te pak, peinsend
te kontoer tot vorm en kleur.
’n Heildronk op skitterende jare –
’n viering van jou binneoog
wat die moment op hok sal slaan:
warrelende voëlvlug inperk
of die ros, speels in handgalop,
op papier en doek tot halt dwing.
Eunice Basson (Augustus 2018)
Nel Erasmus
By the time Nel Erasmus arrived as a 25 year old Wits fine arts graduate at the Académie Ranson in Paris in 1953, post-war France was counting its losses but at the same time was exploring the freedom of abstraction as championed by Cubism. It was a time of new possibilities; of carrying forward the torch lit by Paul Cezanne at the end of the 19th century.
As Gustave Singier (1909-1984), one of the lecturers at the Académie, reminded his students: We are all coming from Cezanne.”
At the same time the spirit of Les Nabis, the Post-Impressionist avant-garde group of artists of whom Paul Ranson (1864-1909), the founder of the academy, was a leading member, was still tangible. The Nabis’ belief that art is the end product and visual expression of an artist’s synthesis of nature in personal aesthetic metaphors and symbols became a basis for Erasmus’ practice and approach to art making.
At the Académie, and later on at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and the Sorbonne, she found a new freedom, a form of abstraction that allows a loving regard for the object whilst exploring the inherent tension and movement within the object.
Ever since her first exhibition in Paris in 1955 movement has remained the leitmotiv in her work. Looking back on her oeuvre, Erasmus reflects that it is “motion, always motion” that has characterised her paintings as well as drawings; motion as an intrinsic quality of all living subject matter. A drawing is therefore not a visual description or representation of a galloping horse or a bird in flight, but an exploration of the essence of motion. Her studies of flowers and series of portraits, including the faceless “Sally” series, are characterised by brightly coloured forms in flux. Likewise, a still life or a painting of an inanimate object such a lamp (Warm Lamp Light, 1964) becomes an interplay of foreground and background, of the object “opening up”, releasing its inner “life” in terms of rhythm and energy.
On her return to South Africa she had her first solo exhibition in 1957 and established herself as one of the earliest Abstract artists in the country. She exhibited work in more than thirty solo exhibitions and between 1982 and 1990 her work was regularly shown at Cassirer Fine Art in Rosebank. Since 2007 Erasmus has exhibited regularly at the Dawid Ras Gallery in Sandton.
Johan Myburg (Poet & Arts Writer)
Eunice Basson
Is in Pretoria gebore en het aan die Universiteit van Pretoria en Unisa studeer. Sy is ’n kunshistorikus en voormalige dosent aan UP en die Departement Kunsgeskiedenis, Visuele Kunste en Musiekwetenskap aan Unisa. Sy het verskeie artikels oor die Suid-Afrikaanse Kunsgeskiedenis in vaktydskrifte gepubliseer en was mede-redakteur van die kunshistoriese vaktydskrif, de arte wat deur Unisa gepubliseer word. In 2011 het sy die MA-graad in Kreatiewe Skryfkuns aan UP onder leiding van prof. Henning Pieterse voltooi en in 2009 het LAPA-Uitgewers ’n beurs vir Kreatiewe Skryfkuns aan haar toegeken. Van haar gedigte is in 1996 Die Tydskrif vir Letterkunde gepubliseer. Sy debuteer in 2014 met die bundel Leiboom.