Artists

Herbert Coetzee was a largely self-taught artist, except for a six-month training he attended in 1949 at the Continental School of Art in Cape Town, where he studied under Maurice van Essche. He was subsequently awarded a bursary by the Koninklijke Acedemie voor Schone Kunsten en de Hogere Institute in Antwerp, Belgium, between 1958 and 1960. He was a member of the executive committee of the South African Society of Artists in the 1950s and lectured in fine art at the Cape Technical College for twenty-three years, until 1981. He was commissioned to create numerous murals for commercial and military offices and for Safmarine vessels – SA Hex River and SA Alphen – and he participated in several group exhibitions, including the 1956 Quadrennial Exhibition and the 1981 Republic Festival Exhibition. Coetzee was a painter of landscapes, still-life studies, seascapes, figures and portraits which were rendered within the popular Cape tradition of derivative impressionism in oil, acrylic, gouache ink and charcoal. His paintings of landscapes with houses and still-life studies, in a colourful palette and using loose brush strokes, make up the main body of his artistic production. He is represented in several public and private collections throughout South Africa.