A Salute to Top South African Female Artists

A number of bold South African female artists paved the way for many others and their boldness, tenacity and incredible creativity are worth celebrating.

Irma Stern (1894-1966)

Irma Stern left behind an incredible artistic legacy. Stern is still considered to be South Africa’s foremost artist in terms of public recognition and the record prices her works fetch at auction. Her strong interest in portraying black people was also a point of public controversy, especially in the 1930s. Visit the Irma Stern Museum in Cape Town.

Maggie Laubser (1886-1973)

Laubser was influential at the time for introducing the techniques and sensibilities of Post-Impressionism and Expressionism to South African art. Her bold colours and compositions, and highly personal point of view, rather scandalised those with old-fashioned concepts of acceptable art at the time.

Judith Mason (1938 – )

Mason was selected to represent South Africa at the Venice Biennale, and at international art fairs such as Art Basel, despite South Africa’s political isolation from the rest of the world. After living and teaching in Florence, Italy, for a while, she returned to South Africa and her work became part of the South African school and university curricula.

Sue Williamson (1941 – )

In the 1980s, Williamson was well known for her series of portraits of women involved in the country’s political struggle. Her famous painting titled, “A Few South Africans”, went some way towards filling the representational void of people and events during apartheid.

Mmapula Mmakgoba Helen Sebidi (1943 – )

Born in 1943 in Hammanskraal near the then-Northern Transvaal, Sebidi went from high-school dropout to domestic worker and then renowned international artist. Against all odds, Sebidi stopped at nothing to become the internationally recognised artist she is today. Sebidi draws her inspiration from township life, and received The Order of the Baobab for “making an excellent contribution in the field of visual and traditional arts and crafts”.

Penny Siopis (1953 – )

Penny Siopis tackled femininity and history in dense, allusive paintings, installations, photographs and other conceptual works throughout her career. She introduced the techniques of collage and assemblage as a means to disrupt direct depiction and to introduce references to the representations of colonial history in South African textbooks.

Jane Alexander (1959 – )

Born in 1959, Jane is best known for her sculpture, “The Butcher Boys”, which can be considered her response to the state of emergency in South Africa in the late 1980s. Most of her pieces are based on and influenced by the political and social overview of South Africa.