Artists

George Enslin was born in Richmond, England in 1919. His father was a military chaplain with the South African Forces during World War I and after the war, the family relocated to Elgin, in the Western Cape. Although he briefly pursued engineering at Stellenbosch University, Enslin left to study commercial art under Arthur Podolini Volkmann at the School of Commercial and Fine Art in Cape Town. In 1946, Enslin studied at the Continental School of Art in Cape Town under Maurice van Essche and held his first solo exhibition two years later. Between 1949 and 1950, he attended the Heatherly School of Fine Art in London, the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, and the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara, Italy. He returned to South Africa in 1950. In the 1960s, he travelled to Japan to learn about Japanese woodblock printing, pottery making, enamel, and bronze casting. He met and married his wife, Noriko, in Osaka, Japan in 1966 and the couple lived in Greece until Enslin’s death in 1972. Enslin was a peripatetic painter who travelled the world by yacht and caravan and his love for adventure is reflected in his spontaneous and energetic painting style, which beautifully captured a variety of landscapes and town scenes.