Albert Adams; South African artist
Hyfler/Rosner
South African artist with a challenging view of his
country's past and future
Marilyn Martin
Friday January 5, 2007
Guardian
The political awareness that the South African artist Albert
Adams, who has died of lung cancer aged 77, acquired as a
boy at Livingston high school, in Capetown's District Six,
remained with him. So did the disillusionment and sense of
alienation, yet he never lost sight of the present and the
relevance of art to society. What he has left behind is a
body of masterly works that will continue to challenge,
enrich and move.
This was confirmed at Adams's exhibition at the Iziko South
African National Gallery in 2002, which included the
Celebration series on the Cape Town carnival, the Kaapse
Klopse. The works were anything but jolly, festive and
celebratory; on the contrary, the mask-like, distorted faces
were angry and menacing. Created in London between 2000 and
2002, all the works referred to post-apartheid South Africa
and the challenges, dangers and threats that came with
political change.
Adams's parents separated soon after he was born in
Johannesburg. His father, a Hindu, had come from India, and
his mother was classified by the white government as Cape
Coloured. Adams lived in London from 1960. South Africa had
offered him much confusion, frustration and pain - from the
time that he had to sneak in and out of his mother's
domestic-worker room as a child, to being refused entrance
to the Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town because of
the colour of his skin and the vicissitudes of life in the
city.
There were, however, positive influences; among them an art
teacher and principal at Livingston high school and classes
alongside the artist and poet Peter Clarke at Hewat College
of Education, Cape Town. There were also the German émigré
friends of the South African artist Irma Stern who,
recognising Adams's talent, encouraged him to apply to art
colleges overseas. He won a scholarship to the Slade School
of Fine Art in London, left his homeland in 1953 and never
looked back. The Slade's prestigious summer prize took him,
via a Bavarian state scholarship, to the University of
Munich and a time with Oscar Kokoschka in Salzburg.
Though he was a second-class citizen in his land of his
birth during the apartheid years, Adams's prodigious talent
was recognised and he visited the country at the end of the
1950s. His first solo exhibition in Cape Town in 1959 was
launched with a taped address from his friend Kokoschka -
the artist was too old to attend in person - and Neville
Dubow of the Michaelis School noted Adams's "technical
ability to express himself fluently in several media, and
more particularly the tremendous emotional intensity behind
that expression." It was a talent, Dubow continued, "well
above the ordinary and a training to match". That year
Adams's Cape Town Harbour was added to what is now the South
African National Gallery's permanent collection.
Adams's 1960 exhibition in Cape Town comprised graphics and
watercolours; again, Dubow referred to his "brilliant
expressionist technique" and compared the quality and
intensity of his etchings to that of Goya. The influence of
Kokoschka was profound, as was that of Francis Bacon and
Picasso. Adams spoke of the tightrope that an artist walks
between the emotions which direct the creativity and the
objectivity required in the development of the work.
In 1979 Adams began 18 years as a lecturer at the City
University, London. Apart from Britain, he exhibited in
Belgium, Brazil, Germany and Yugoslavia. His most recent
work made powerful comments on the war in Iraq. His death
came at a time when a retrospective exhibition at the Iziko,
and at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, was being discussed.
Youthful, energetic and inspired, Adams was a great artist.
I will remember his charm, beauty, wit and elegance, the
intelligence and insight he brought to conversations on
everyday life, art and politics, his generosity of spirit,
and unwavering commitment to his art. He is survived by his
civil partner Edward Glennon.
· Albert Adams, artist, born June 23 1929; died December 31
2006