Return to France

Ernest Mancoba and his family returned to France in 1951 and they lived in the countryside near Paris for what he described as 'nine hard, but creatively fruitful years'.

Mancoba was an irregular contributor to the magazine, Le Musee Vivant, edited by Madeleine Rousseau, who became a firm friend. He used the platform to plead for greater international unity that would make racial and political differences obsolete at a time when political pressures were intense as the struggle for independence in Africa had begun. One issue that he contributed to in 1953 was co-edited by Cheikh Anta Diop.

The Mancobas moved back to Paris in 1960 and Ernest Mancoba obtained French citizenship in 1961, the year South Africa became a republic.

He no longer sculpted, tending more towards ink drawings and linocuts and oil paintings.

Mancoba examined the split between the artist and society in Western art since the Renaissance in an essay, 'Arts at the crossroads' published in the Danish art journal, Billedkunst, in 1968. This was in contrast to traditional African cultures where art was not only an expression of the individual artist, but of the whole society and had spiritual meaning. For him, the only solution lay in the reconciliation of opposites. For him the very survival of modern society depended on humanity regaining a balance between spiritual and material values; he said we have to find a way in which body and spirit can co-exist.

After Ferlov's death in 1984, Mancoba progressively stripped his images of referential material. It appeared that he was reverting more and more to a language without boundaries, hence his preference for signs, says art historian Elza Miles.

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