Louis Khehla MAQHUBELA (b. 1939)
Labourers
1965
drawing
33 x 22 cm
Emancipation
1972
mixed media on paper
60 x 60 cm
BIOGRAPHY
Louis Khehla Maqhubela was a pioneering South African artist renowned for his contribution to modern and abstract art. Born in Durban in 1939, he moved to Johannesburg to be with his parents in 1952. He was a member of artist and teacher Durant Sihlali’s weekend artists group from 1955 to 1957. And, from 1957 to 1959, while still at school in Soweto, he studied under the direction of Cecil Skotnes and sculptor Sydney Kumalo at the Polly Street Art Centre, which was housed in a hall in Johannesburg and exhibited the work of artists of all races, defying the racial segregation of Apartheid.
Maqhubela started work as a commercial artist and, from 1960, was commissioned to create paintings and mosaics in hospitals, schools, halls and bar lounges in and around Soweto.
He gained early recognition in 1967 when he became the first Black South African to win a major national painting award, the Adler Fielding Prize, which included a travel bursary to Europe. This achievement marked a significant turning point in his career.
During his European travels, he began to explore abstraction, incorporating influences from modernist movements. This was accompanied by the development of an artistic language and iconography inspired by his quest for spiritual growth. His paintings in oil on canvas or paper of the 1970s are characterised by thinly applied layers of paint articulated by means of scraffito, sometimes completely abstract, at other times with figures, birds and animals emerging from the wiry lines, colour and floating shapes.
In 1973, Maqhubela and his family left Apartheid South Africa, moving first to the Spanish island of Ibiza in 1973 and settling in London in 1978. There, he pursued further studies at Goldsmiths College (1984 – 1985) and the Slade School of Art (1985 – 1988). His career flourished internationally, with his works entering major collections such as the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington. He continued to exhibit extensively in South Africa, in group as well as solo shows and featured prominently in Esmé Berman’s book, The Story of South African Painting (1975).
A career highlight came with his retrospective exhibition, A Vigil of Departure (1960 – 2010), which opened at Johannesburg’s Standard Bank Gallery before touring Cape Town and Durban. The exhibition, curated by Marilyn Martin, celebrated five decades of his artistic evolution, offering South Africans the opportunity to engage with his work on home soil.