Strauss & co - 6 March 2017, Cape Town

276 543 Ephraim NGATANE SOUTH AFRICAN 1938–1971 Jazz Band signed and dated ‘69 oil on board 61 by 91 cm R  –   Ephraim Ngatane is an important mid-twentieth century South African painter. He studied under Cecil Skotnes at Polly Street Art Centre between 1952 and 1954, where he also met and befriended Durant Sihlali. Along with Sihlali and David Mogano, Ngatane earned a reputation for producing highly individual studies of township scenes using watercolour.1 He debuted on the second Artists of Fame and Promise exhibition in 1960, held at the Lawrence Adler Galleries, Johannesburg, and in 1963 presented his first solo exhibition with the same art dealership, renamed Adler Fielding Galleries. Despite holding sell-out exhibitions throughout the 1960s until his premature death in 1971, as well as his role in mentoring Dumile Feni, the white art market adopted a“patronising attitude”to Ngatane and treated his work as a“step-child of mainstream South African art,” according to artist David Koloane.2 Ngatane was nonetheless regarded as important figurehead. Artist and playwright Matsemela Manaka, quoting Ezrom Legae, describes Ngatane as “one of the forerunners”3 of township art, a once-dominant style of social-realist painting descriptive of black urban life. Ngatane’s“muscular style”4 however challenges easy categorisation. An accomplished colourist, his work is marked by its lyrical impressionism and selective use of abstraction. While ©TheEstate ofEphraimNgatane |DALRO