Ernest Mancoba
Ernest Mancoba. Composition, 1951. Barry Sullivan and Ada Turnbull Hertle endowment funds.
- Date of birth
- Date of death
With a body of work that spans more than six decades, Ernest Mancoba is known for his abstract paintings and sculptures that combine visual elements of wall paintings from his native South Africa; traditional African masks and sculptures; and frescoes from Denmark where he lived. In both challenging and expanding canonical Western painting, Mancoba captured the human spirit through vibrant colors and loosely abstracted forms.
Mancoba left South Africa in 1938 to study at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Together with his wife, fellow artist Sonja Ferlov, Mancoba moved to Denmark in 1947, where he was introduced to painter Asger Jorn, a founding member of the CoBrA group. Named after three cities that its members originated from, Copenhagen (Co), Brussels (Br), and Amsterdam (A), the influential artist collective was known for depicting mythical and loosely figurative elements in their work. Regarded as a European counterpart to Abstract Expressionism, the CoBrA artists embraced an intuitive approach to gestural painting. Despite being the only black artist in CoBrA and marginalized by critics, art historians, and even his peers, Mancoba established his reputation as a leading figure in post-war European painting and sculpture. He primarily lived in Europe and would not return to South Africa until after the end of apartheid in 1994.
Mancoba considered the division between abstraction and figuration to have “no real place, no significance, for the African artist, just as it never did for the European artist.” Composition (1951) exemplifies this liberated attitude. Mancoba’s application of paint on raw canvas and the fusion of geometric shapes with the intensity of blotted blue, red, and orange hues reflect his devotion to developing a visual language that evoked the union of feelings and ideas.
