30 colour photolithographs

Aspire Collect Eligible: Yes
Artwork date: 2004
Signature details: each signed, dated, numbered respectively out of 25, inscribed with the respective title in pencil in the margin and embossed with The Artists' Press chop mark bottom right
Exhibited: Florence Lynch Gallery, Chelsea, New York, 'Glimpses of the fifties and sixties', 2004, an example from the edition exhibited.
Literature: Dundas, N., Mtombela, N., Dalamba, L. & Mokoena, H. (2019). 'Leeto: A Sam Nhlengethwa Print Retrospective'. Johannesburg: Goodman Gallery, other examples from the edition illustrated in colour on pp. 34-43, 48, 49-54, 62, 63.

(30)

sheet size: 50 x 38.5 cm; image size: 20.5 x 28.5 cm unframed each

Provenance:

Private collection, Johannesburg.

Including:

24/25 Underground

21/25 Whites Only Area

21/25 Gum Boot Dance

21/25 Part Time Job I

21/25 Part Time Job II

21/25 The End of Kofifi

21/25 A Tired Miner

21/25 The Shebeen

21/25 Compounds

21/25 Humiliation

21/25 Sharpeville Massacre

21/25 Skipping

21/25 Mbombela

24/25 While We Were Young I

25/25 While We Were Young II

21/25 While We Were Young III

21/25 The Grinding Stone

22/25 Near The Bus Stop

24/25 Hard at Work I

4/25 Hard at Work Il

22/ 25 Stop it Verwoerd

25/25 Pay day

7/25 Azikhwelwa

6/25 Protests

11/25 Candlelit Studying

25/25 Miners Showering

12/25 Pass Raid

24/25 Colleagues

20/25 Migrant Labourers

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

For Sam Nhlengethwa, Glimpses of the Fifties and Sixties is both a personal and historical reflection that has found an outlet through the photogravure process. The artist has taken what was first a collage – made up of images from Drum magazine’s archive as well as the artist’s own family albums – and found a more physically laborious and intricate outlet through the printing process. Working on the project, allowed Nhlengethwa to reminisce about his time growing up in his grandmother’s house, interconnected with memories of dompas and curfew laws of Apartheid. He notes:

“My visual expression through painting was therapeutic and has now been transformed into what I believe to be a historical retrospective.” [1]

^{[1] The Artists' Press, Sam Nhlengethwa Glimpses of the 50s and 60s. Online: [https://www.artprintsa.com/sam-nhlengethwa.html]}

COLLECTOR'S NOTE

• Sam Nhlengethwa is one of the founders of the respected Bag Factory artist studio space in Newtown, Johannesburg, where notable artists including David Koloane and Pat Mautloa had their studios.

• The artist received the prestigious Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year award in 1994, the same year as South Africa’s first democratic elections.

• Nhlengethwa’s work was included in the reputable London-based Whitechapel Gallery’s Seven Stories About Modern Art in Africa in 1995.

• In 2014, a major retrospective exhibition titled Life, Jazz and Lots of Other Things, was hosted by SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia which then travelled to the Carter Centre in Atlanta.

• In 2000, he participated in a group show at Seippel Art Gallery in Cologne. Other notable international group exhibitions include Beyond Borders: Global Africa at the University of Michigan Museum of Art (2018); Constructions: Contemporary Art from South Africa at Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói in Brazil (2011); POST – Contemporary South African photography at Tama Art University Museum in Tokyo, Japan (2004); amongst many others.

• Nhlengethwa’s work has featured on a number of international biennales: including the 8th Havana Biennale, Southern African Stories: A Print Collection in 2003, the 12th International Cairo Biennale in 2010, the 2013 Venice Biennale as part of the South African pavilion, titled Imaginary Fact: Contemporary South African Art and the Archive, and in the 6th Beijing Biennale in 2015.

• Nhlengethwa’s practice features in important arts publications, including The 20th Century Art Book (2001) and African Artists: From 1882 to Now (2021), both published by the prestigious Phaidon Press.

24/25 Coal Shed

COLLECTIONS:

The artist is represented in numerous local and international collections, notably, the South African Reserve Bank, Johannesburg; Standard Bank Gallery, Johannesburg; Johannesburg Art Gallery; Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA), Cape Town; Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town; Durban Art Gallery; University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg; MTN Art Collection, Johannesburg and the Sasol Art Collection, Johannesburg.