Alfred THOBA (b. 1951)
Abolition Of Slavery In South Africa
1999
oil on canvas
95 x 155 cm
The Wood Cutter And His Family
1994
oil on board
54 x 63 cm
BIOGRAPHY
Alfred Thoba was born in Sophiatown and spent most of life and 50-year career as an artist in Johannesburg.
A largely self-taught artist and an active member of the resistance art movement, he is acclaimed for his politically and emotionally charged social realist artworks.
Deeply concerned with the disenfranchisement of black South Africans, both during and post-apartheid, Thoba’s work explores contemporary events and moments of historical significance, while also portraying the private and political aspects of sex, marriage and love. Frequent subjects include the effects of urbanisation of people’s lives, including children who have turned to stealing, prostitution and violence to survive on the streets. Human relationships and personal suffering also feature, as do contemporary events, as recorded in newspaper articles.
His finished works were often accompanied by a letter written by the artist himself.
Although he rose to public attention in 1988 with a painting recalling the youth rebellion that had racked apartheid South Africa over a decade earlier, Toba died in obscurity in 2022.
In 2024, Thoba’s life and work were highlighted in a commemorative exhibition staged by Strauss & Co and Kalashnikov Gallery, titled True Love. A selection of his artwork was exhibited alongside archival materials and a reconstruction of his home studio, which was at 12 Gainsborough Mansions in Hillbrow. Named after a painting by Thoba of two lovers embracing, reproduced in the South African Playboy magazine in the 1990s, True Love provided a deeper understanding of his Modernist approach to his practice, and his personal life, inextricably linked to his painting.