Recognition

Danish artist Ejler Bille described his friend Ernest Mancoba as one of the greatest colourists. Today Mancoba is slowly being recognised as one of the great artists of the 20th century and is acknowledged as a forerunner to the abstract expressionist movement.

'If Mancoba did not follow an already established movement, genre or style, nor was he influenced by the work of a particular artist, then we have no choice but to declare the originality of his work,' writes Rasheed Araeen in Third Text. 'What I am suggesting is that Mancoba's work may represent an historical breakthrough within the mainstream modernism.'

His work is in many international galleries and has appeared in significant international exhibitions, including 'The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa' in 2001 in Germany and the United States, and a major retrospective of 20th century art in Las Palmas in 2000.

He produced a small but significant body of work: sculptures, paintings, drawings and linocuts from the 1920s to the 1990s. Original, rooted in his African cultural heritage and sensitive to the deeper values of Christianity, Mancoba's work is alert to international artistic debate and imbued with profound reflections on the state of the world in the 20th century.

It requires time to absorb the shapes and colours in Mancoba's work and read it holistically. Yet his message resonates powerfully today as it goes beyond his own era, pointing the way to solving fundamental problems of the 21st century.

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