Sydney Kumalo

Sydney Kumalo born and grew up in Soweto, Johannesburg. He attended Polly Street Art Centre from 1948 where he studied under Cecil Skotnes. He soon became an assistant to Skotnes and later a teacher at the school. The Centre was forced to close in 1957, but reopened in a new location as the Jubilee Art Centre, where Kumalo continued to teach and mentor students. He worked on two mural commissions for churches with Skotnes and spent time in the studio of Edoardo Villa where he was exposed to the work of modernist sculptors such as Constantin Brâncuși, Henry Moore and Marino Marini. In 1962, Kumalo had his first solo exhibition at Egon Guenther’s gallery and showed later in the 60s with Guenther’s Amadlozi Group, which included Villa, Skotnes, Cecil Sash, Giuseppe Cattaneo and later Ezrom Legae. Kumalo was exposed to central and west African sculpture though Guenther’s extensive collection and synthesised his own style from African and Modernist precedents. His bronzes depict human and animal forms, sometimes in combination, using expressive figuration with striated and stippled surface texture. Kumalo had work on numerous local and international exhibitions including at the Grosvenor Gallery, London, in 1965 and 1967, and at the Venice and São Paulo Biennales in 1966 and 1968, respectively. His work is in the collections of the Johannesburg Art Gallery; Rembrandt van Rijn Art Foundation; Iziko South African National Gallery; University of Fort Hare; and Wits Art Museum.

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