Lot Essay
This and the following two lots by Sekoto date to the 1950s. The artist had moved to Paris in 1947: 'Sekoto's works produced during this early Paris period display a radical shift from his previous style, with meanderings through a variety of new stylistic approaches...Divorced from the black 'township' communities, the original source of subject for his paintings, Sekoto now for the first time began to re-work similar subjects...The multiplicity of styles evident in the works executed during Sekoto's first few years in Paris reveals an artist exposed to a wide range of new impulses, environments and sources of stylistic inspiration, grappling to maintain his African individuality while committing remembered images to canvas.' (L. Spiro, Gerard Sekoto, Unsevered Ties, Johannesburg Art Gallery (exhibition catalogue), 1989-90, pp.49-50)