STILL GOING ON
signed, titled and numbered A / P "Still going on" M.M.H.Sebidi lower margin
lithograph
42.5 x 35cm; 16 3/4 x 13 3/4in
79.5 x 68cm; 31 1/4 x 26 3/4in (framed)

Property from a Private Collection, London

Provenance
Acquired from Ellerman House, Cape Town in 1998 by the present owner

Born in Marapyane, near Hammanskraal, Sebidi is celebrated as one of South Africa’s most influential artists. She developed a life-long love for the designs of traditional arts and craft which she learnt from her grandmother who was a decorative wall and floor painter. She began painting herself after working as a domestic worker in Johannesburg. Coming from a humble family with limited means and little formal education, Sebidi pursued her nascent sense of creativity in her own time, until her work was discovered by her employer, who, astonished by her talent, encouraged her to paint.

Sebidi’s works are dense and exuberant; they pulsate with energy. Strange figures, some fantastical and mythological, and some drawn from her own richly storied history, jostle for space on the crowded canvases and prints, at times evoking a sense of celebration and, at other times, of terror and loss. In 1985, she had her first solo show at the influential Federated Union of Black Artists in Newtown. Sebidi has won several awards, including Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year Award, 1989, the Vita Award, 1990, and South Africa’s prestigious Order of Ikhamanga in 2004.