Peter Haden - Almost Forgotten

6 On the record Peter Haden was one of the prestigious group of artists mentored and promoted by gallerist Egon Guenther. Along with Edoardo Villa, Cecil Skotnes, Sydney Kumalo, Ezrom Legae, Hannes Harrs, Giuseppe Cattaneo and Cecily Sash, Haden benefited from Guenther’s tutelage and the exposure that high-profile exhibitions at Guenther’s Linksfield gallery afforded. Despite the high quality of his works, very little is known or has been written about Peter Haden. There is no reference to him in Frieda Harmsen’s Looking at South African Art (Van Schaik, 1985), in Grania Ogilvie’s The Dictionary of South African Painters and Sculptors (Everard Read, 1988) or in Elizabeth Rankin’s Images of Metal (Witwatersrand University Press, 1994). There is a brief reference to Peter Haden in Esmé Berman’s Art and Artists of South Africa (Balkema, 1983, p. 32): Guenther, meanwhile, had drawn three further artists, Peter Hayden (sic), Hannes Harrs and Ezrom Legae, into his stable, his intention being to re-establish the Group as ‘Amadlozi 69’ or ‘70’ for renewed exhibition activity on the international scene. Berman repeats this passage in her revised 1996 edition, but unfortunately again incorrectly refers to ‘Hayden’ rather than ‘Haden’, an error that regrettably reoccurs on the rare occasions Haden’s work appears on the secondary market in South Africa. A few articles relating to Haden appeared in Artlook magazine in the 1960s: a short piece on his new work in ‘Around the Studios’ (‘Peter Haden’, Artlook 8 , July 1967, p. 12); a review on the first exhibition at the art school he established in Craighall, Johannesburg (Shirley Eskapa , ‘Student Exhibition at the Academy’, Artlook 26 , January 1969, pp. 6–7) and a double-page illustrated spread on the artist and his work (Shirley Eskapa, ‘Peter Haden’, Artlook 27 , February 1969, pp. 24–25). Egon Guenther at the entrance to his Linksfield Gallery, c. 1961 photograph by paul vink