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Winston Churchill Masakeng Saoli

Winston Churchill Masakeng Saoli (1950 - 1995) was active/lived in South Africa.  Winston Saoli is known for Figure, abstract painting.

Winston Saoli (1950 Acornhoek, Mpumalanga - 1995)

Churchill Masakeng Winston Saoli was born in Acornhoek, Mpumalanga, on January 3, 1950 and died in 1995.  He studied at the Jubilee Art Centre under Bill Hart and Ezrom Legae.  His teachers, helper and influences also included Ephraim Ngatane, Helen Anne Petrie and Cecil Skotnes. Winston Saoli later completed a diploma in commercial art.

After a first solo exhibition at the Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, in 1969, he took part in numerous solo and group exhibitions including ones which toured Great Britain and West Germany. His career was interrupted when he was arrested for attending ANC-meetings at the Witwatersrand University in 1972.  He was locked up in solitary confinement, without trial, for six months.  This experience had a far-reaching and lasting effect on his life.  After his release he started to live an unsettled life, and for many years periodically lived the life of a vagrant on Joha   ...  [Displaying 1000 of 2632 characters.]  Artist bio

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Facts about Winston Churchill Masakeng Saoli

   Winston Churchill Masakeng Saoli  Born:  1950 - Acornhoek, Mpumalanga
Died:   1995 - Johannesburg, South Africa
Known for:  Figure, abstract painting

Biography from the Archives of askART

Winston Saoli (1950 Acornhoek, Mpumalanga - 1995)

Churchill Masakeng Winston Saoli was born in Acornhoek, Mpumalanga, on January 3, 1950 and died in 1995.  He studied at the Jubilee Art Centre under Bill Hart and Ezrom Legae.  His teachers, helper and influences also included Ephraim Ngatane, Helen Anne Petrie and Cecil Skotnes. Winston Saoli later completed a diploma in commercial art.

After a first solo exhibition at the Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, in 1969, he took part in numerous solo and group exhibitions including ones which toured Great Britain and West Germany. His career was interrupted when he was arrested for attending ANC-meetings at the Witwatersrand University in 1972.  He was locked up in solitary confinement, without trial, for six months.  This experience had a far-reaching and lasting effect on his life.  After his release he started to live an unsettled life, and for many years periodically lived the life of a vagrant on Johannesburg streets.  He died on a street corner in May 1995.

During 1992, Saoli was taken in by the Soweto Art Gallery, downtown Johannesburg, who provided him with accommodation for long periods. After 1992 he was extremely prolific, and produced, an important body of work.  He was a painter, sculptor and graphic artist who depicted the human figure and animals.  Although he painted important resistance art in the earlier years, his later works tended towards a universality, and often convey a strong poetical and lyrical nature, a modernist concern with form, autonomous colour and surface.

By 1994 South Africa was again a member of the Commonwealth, and Saoli was the only South African artist whose works was selected to be shown at the Commonwealth Games Art and Culture Festival, Canada. In addition his works were exhibited in Britain, Germany, Israel, and the USA in the later years of his life

Artist Statement:
"My biggest contribution to South African art is that I have influenced other black artists to the new school of painting. I have moved away from the earliest black artists like Gerard Sekoto and Ephraim Ngatane (who incidentally was one of my teachers)! They specialised in township life, but in contrast, I moved in my own direction, with my techniques which lead me from one technique into another. Even today I keep searching for other techniques in order to create a different style of modern abstract painting."

Source:
The Strutt Family Trust, The Mayfair Collection (Suisse) SA, The Mayfair Collection (Pty) Ltd, The Mayfair Collection Limited


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