WORDS Amelia Brown
Works from exiled South African artist and key influencer in SA Modernism, Dumile Feni, are to be exhibited in New York in May 2017.
London’s Grosvenor Gallery will be exhibiting the work of South African artist Dumile Feni (1942–1991) at Frieze New York from 5 to 7 May 2017.
Exiled from South Africa during Apartheid, Dumile lived in London and New York, until his death in New York in 1991. Known for the ferocity and compassion of his work and dubbed by journalists as a star in the Sixties, he went on to influence many of the artists of the day.
Leading South African artist William Kentridge says of Dumile: “He had the capacity to express things on a scale that I thought drawings could not achieve. He is the key artist who influenced me.”
Emerging from Soweto, Johannesburg in the 1960s, along with a generation of highly creative and dynamic artists, musicians and creatives, his success came at a cost. His fame alerted the South African Apartheid authorities who, wanting to abate the rumours of Dumile’s association with white art patrons, imposed restrictions on Dumile and ordered him to return to his hometown, leading to his exile from 1968 to his death.
Struggle & Repression – from Soweto Township to his death in New York will feature Dumile’s drawings and sculpture from 1960–1991.
