ALBERT ADAMS RETROSPECTIVE EXHIBITION
OPENS 19 JULY
Rooms 4, 5 and Liberman Room

The first comprehensive retrospective exhibition of works by the renowned and well loved Albert Adams draws from local and international, private and public collections and is curated by Marilyn Martin, Joe Dolby and Andrea Lewis, with invaluable advice and support from Edward Glennon in London.

Adams was born in Johannesburg in 1929, but grew up in Cape Town. As a young artist he was unable to study at the University of Cape Town’s Michaelis School of Art because of apartheid policies. He was however awarded a scholarship to study at the Slade School of Art in London where he studied from 1953 to 1956. He then enrolled for a brief course of study at the Munich Academy of Arts and later in 1957 attended master classes under the internationally renowned artist, Oskar Kokoschka. He returned to Cape Town where he exhibited widely, but in 1960 decided to leave South Africa for good and settled in London. In 1979, he was appointed to the staff of the City University, London, where he lectured in art history for 18 years. After a brief illness, Albert Adams passed away on 31 December 2006.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue.
 

FORTY YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP: THE FRIENDS OF THE SA NATIONAL GALLERY: 1968–2008
21 JUNE - 28 SEPTEMBER 2008

The Friends of the South African National Gallery (FONG) mark their 40th anniversary with this celebratory exhibition of works of art that they have presented to the Gallery’s collections over the past four decades. While the exhibition emphasises exciting, newly-acquired works of contemporary South African art that are being shown for the very first time, it also reveals the quietly supportive role played by the FONG in building a very broad and representative collection for the nation over an extensive period. Without this loyal and proactive support, our collecting activities would have been greatly impoverished.

Twenty-five years after the Architectural Association of London exhibited his work, an exhibition entitled ‘Pancho Guedes – An Alternative Modernist’ was commissioned and produced by the Swiss Architecture Museum in Basel in 2007. Curated by Pedro Gadanho, this exhibition focused on the nearly twenty-fiveyear period during which he was active in Mozambique, and his extraordinary achievements in more than 500 projects. Pancho’s capacity to seamlessly bring together Europe and Africa, art and architecture, dream and reality, are revealed and further explored in the newly-curated component that introduces work created mostly in South Africa after April 1974. Curated by architects Henning Rasmuss and Dagmar Hoetzel, in consultation with the architect, it is separate yet conceptually linked to the S AM show.

At a time when little attention was paid to the aesthetic production of Africa, Pancho was a promoter and supporter of vernacular architecture and African artists, notably Malangatana Valente and Tito Zungu. Despite this, his work has never been shown in either Mozambique or South Africa.

The exhibitions in Cape Town and Johannesburg are sponsored by Instituto Camões in Portugal, Arup, the Cement and Concrete Institute of South Africa, Business Arts South Africa, Grand West Cultural Heritage Trust, as well as various businesses, architectural practices and individuals.

Enquiries: Marilyn Martin, Tel. 021 467 4660 or email mmartin@iziko.org.za.
 

FABRICATIONS: DRAPERY AND DRESS IN WORKS FROM THE IZIKO COLLECTION
ONGOING
Room 3

In many works of art, especially in 17th century Europe’s Baroque era, drapery began to assume a life of its own. While this was true of painting, it became especially apparent in the sculpture of Bernini in Rome. Bernini’s fame was such that the King of France, Louis XIV, wanted to lure him to France to work for him there. Bernini responded to his summons in 1665, but the only well-known result of his visit was an amazing and finely-wrought marble bust of the King, fashioned so that his head and shoulders seem to float on a whirl of drapery, as if on a cloud. The 27-year-old king is represented as young, handsome and majestic. A full-scale replica of Bernini’s famous bust features in this exhibition, courtesy of the University of Stellenbosch’s Fine Arts Department, which houses a collection of plaster casts.

ROMANTIC CHILDHOOD
CURRENT
Room 2

On the one hand, the invention of photography in the early 19th century spread the notion and ideal of the Romantic child far and wide, and made the conventions of Romantic childhood accessible to all. On the other, it has been largely responsible for the ‘crisis’ that now confronts the notion of ‘ideal childhood’ because of its use in the pornographic industry. Our sense is that childhood ‘innocence’ must be protected at all costs from its influence. At the same time, we are acutely aware that photographs are not necessarily free of sexual messages, especially in an age where advertising makes use of images of children to sell virtually anything. This 1910 image by Arthur Elliott uses nudity to emphasis a state of childhood innocence, but should an adult (male) photographer attempt to create such an image in 2008, serious questions and objections might arise.

Enquiries: Hayden Proud, Tel. 021 467 4673 or email hproud@iziko.org.za.