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The Academic Portraits of Cyril Coetzee

A Selection of University Portraiture by the South African Painter

THE ART SCENE in South Africa is widely varied in both style and quality, and the individual artist who is devoted solely to a single school is almost rare. The works of Cyril Coetzee (born in 1959) vary from quasi-figurative explorations of colour dynamics to multi-layered, almost mythological narrative paintings. His academic research at Rhodes University, located in his Eastern Cape hometown of Grahamstown, explored anthroposophic colour theory, so it’s no surprise part of his further studies were undertaken at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland (one of the sites covered in Stephen Klimczuk & Gerald Warner of Craigenmaddie’s Secret Places, Hidden Sanctuaries). Coetzee’s corpus also include a number of purely figurative portraits, many of which were commissioned by places of learning in South Africa.

Cyril Coetzee, S. A. G. Anderson
Oil on canvas, 39 in. x 33½ in.
University of the Witwatersrand

Dr. Anderson was Chairman of the Council of the University of Witwatersrand.

Cyril Coetzee, Anton Rupert
Oil on canvas, 37 in. x 31½ in.
University of Pretoria

The Stellenbosch-born Anton Rupert was the most celebrated Afrikaner businessman & entrepreneur, who became a (U.S. dollar) billionaire beginning with an invest of just £10 in 1941. Rupert was a founding member of the World Wildlife Fund (now the World Wide Fund for Nature) and was instrumental in the creation of trans-frontier conservation areas in southern Africa. Here he is depicted in his gown as Chancellor of the University of Pretoria. (His son Johann Rupert is currently the Chancellor of Stellenbosch University, as previously mentioned).

Cyril Coetzee, Mathews Phosa
Oil on canvas, 45 in. x 34½ in.
University of South Africa

Nakedi Mathews Phosa is an attorney and politician who went into exile during the 1980s as an ANC activist. He was one of the first to return in 1990 to begin discussions with the National Party government to come to a new constitutional accommodation. In 1994 he became Premier of the new province of the Eastern Transvaal (which was renamed Mpumalanga the following year) and played an important role in reconciliation efforts between the new ANC government and the Afrikaner community. Phosa serves on the board of the Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut and has published a volume of poetry entitled Deur die oog van ’n naald (“Through the Eye of a Needle”, 1999, re-issued in 2009). He is depicted here in his official gown as Chairman of the Council of the University of South Africa.

Cyril Coetzee, George Bizos
Oil on canvas, 35 in. x 43 in.
Saheti School, Johannesburg

This is not a university portrait, but an academic one all the same. George Bizos was born in Greece in 1928. He was thirteen years old when he helped seven New Zealand soldiers escape the Nazi-occupied Greek mainland by sea, where they were picked up by HMS Kimberley, which dropped him off in Alexandria. He made his way to Johannesburg where the local Greek community helped him to integrate by learning English and Afrikaans, and he began his legal studies at Wits in 1948. Bizos was called to the Johannesburg Bar in 1954 and began a long career in human rights cases. He served on Botswana’s Court of Appeal from 1985 to 1993. In the 1970s, Bizos founded the Saheti School, open to all races but with an education based on Hellenistic principles and with pastoral care provided by the Greek Orthodox Church. The Saheti School commissioned this portrait from Cyril Coetzee, in which George Bizos dons his advocate’s attire.

Cyril Coetzee, Antony Melck
Oil on canvas, 45½ in. x 34½ in.
University of South Africa

Professor Antony Melck’s studies have spanned multiple disciplines. He has studied law at Stellenbosch, economics at Cambridge, music in London (where he was admitted as a Fellow of the Trinity College of Music), and has a doctorate in the economics of education from Stellenbosch. Through the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation he was a visiting professor and fellow at the University of Cologne. He is a former Principal & Vice-Chancellor of the University of South Africa, and currently serves as Advisor to the Rector of the University of Pretoria.

Cyril Coetzee, Self-Portrait
Oil on canvas, 33½ in. x 49 in.
William Humphreys Art Gallery, Kimberley

Of Coetzee’s portraits, my favourite is related neither to a university, nor to a school, but is rather the artist’s own self-portrait. I dislike when portraits have neutral backgrounds, and infinitely prefer them to be set in a place or setting, even if an invented one. The painter’s studio self-portrait has a lot more life in it than the academic portraits above.

Published at 7:20 pm on Sunday 1 August 2010. Categories: Art Featured South Africa Tags: , .
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