Notes

Kenneth Bakker and his artist wife, Bernadine Biden, lived in a beach chalet at Murdoch Valley in Simonstown. The state of his health limited his activity to the isolated setting of his home. He was primarily stimulated by the coastline and the ceaseless movements of the sea which, seen retrospectively, were influential factors in the nature of his work.

Gradually he moved from recognizable visual images to abstract forms and finally to a non-figurative translation of his daily experiences. His abstract phase began with his exploration of abstract landscapes sculpted by shifting water on the rocks and the varied colours, shapes and textures of formations of moving sand. His compositions from the 1960s to 1970s remained essentially organic. This allowed him to invent variations on his own artistic idiom.

Bakker achieved his effects by applying layers of oil-paint one upon the other and incorporating perspex as a medium which allowed him to produce a physically textured surface and to sculpt the elements of composition in relief. In the last phase of his creative life, his earlier informal shapes were replaced by a more mechanistic concept. His work became three-dimensional assemblages of overlapping sheets of perspex, resembling a modern architectural idiom and yet retaining the earlier quality of his metaphysical beach landscapes.

The technical aspect could also be viewed as symptomatic of the late 20th century desire to dissolve the traditional boundaries between painting and sculpture.

In 1963 Bakker created a South African precedent by becoming the first local painter to receive an award at the São Paulo Biennale. He had his first solo exhibition in Johannesburg in 1968 and his last in 1969 in Cape Town.

Both Bakker and his wife, Bernadine Biden, were ailing when they took their own lives in the Good Hope Nature Reserve in August 1988. – Amanda Botha

 

Esmé Berman (1974). The Story of South African Painting. Cape Town: AA Balkema. Pages 194-197.

Amanda Botha, SA Panorama, Pretoria; ‘The Art of Kenneth Bakker’. January 1969. Pages 40-41.

Amanda Botha: Lantern, Pretoria: ‘Die taal van Kenneth Bakker’. June 1970. (Vol. XIX, no. 4). Pages 14-19.

Provenance

Purchased directly from the artist by the current owner.