Notes

When the story of South African sculpture is told, Ezrom Legae may well prove to be one of its greatest protagonists – one whose mastery of his sculptural medium and of the tenets of Modernism has not been sufficiently acknowledged because so few of his best works have been brought to public attention. Legae’s Goatherd and Goat broke auction records when it sold for R334 200 at Strauss & Co’s March auction in 2010.

Legae was exposed to contemporary African art when he studied at the Polly Street and Jubilee Art Centres under Cecil Skotnes and Sydney Kumalo from 1959 to 1964. He was introduced to the sculptural traditions of West and Central Africa as well as to German Expressionism and European Modernism by leading African art collector, connoisseur and gallerist, Egon Guenther, who played a major role in Legae’s stylistic development.

His travels in Europe and the USA in 1970 as a result of winning a travel scholarship from the United States South Africa Leadership Exchange Programme (USSALEP) resulted in an expanded and more sophisticated vision that married African and European iconography and formal language.

While African Goat acknowledges traditional African art forms such as the mask it also evokes the sculptural innovations of European Modernists such as Picasso and Giacometti. With rare sensitivity Legae pares down extraneous detail yet retains all the intensity and physicality of lived experience.

African Goat, edition 3 of 7, is in the Permanent Collection of Iziko South African National Gallery. The gallery’s records reveal that it was cast in 1990 and acquired in the same year. Legae is also represented in the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington; Johannesburg Art Gallery, Pretoria Art Museum, Durban Art Museum, Tatham Art Gallery, William Humphries Art Gallery, Wits Art Museum, Fort Hare Museum and the University of South Africa, amongst others.

Provenance

The Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, 1990.