The intensity with which Adams had painted in 1959, combined with the horrors of the growing violence of apartheid, perhaps had a more profound effect on him than he would...
The intensity with which Adams had painted in 1959, combined with the horrors of the growing violence of apartheid, perhaps had a more profound effect on him than he would admit. In 1960, Adams returned to London. He claimed that he wished simply to return to his friends. But this was also, in many senses, politically motivated. As his friend and fellow artist, the British painter Harold Riley, said, Adams’ ‘painful experiences when he returned to South Africa marked him, and planted a seed that fuelled his work in London until he died.’
Adams’ life in London was a reclusive one. He rejected the commercial art world and exhibited rarely. His art, however, reached a broader public in the form of his cover designs for Heinemann’s African Writers series. One, Quartet: New Voices from South Africa, produced in 1963, would be an example of a reductive self-portrait that he would continually reengage with for much of his life. He had produced a similar print in 1960, of a distended egg-shaped head teetering on a stick-like neck.
Elza Miles states, in her monograph An Invincible Spirit: Albert Adams and His Art, ‘the Self Portrait (1960), consisting of ovals, ellipses, and vertical rectangles, served as a blueprint for Celebration Head (1996).’ Miles suggests that the wheels that appear at the shoulders intimate the work of the crumpled man on a wheelchair, which he simply titled Celebration (2002).
Celebration Head is certainly another attempt to investigate himself and his elusive identity. As Adams would state, he was always seeking to unpick just who he was:
I think identity is something that I find very difficult to pin down — just who I am. I think if you were involved with painting or with any of the arts, then that really becomes crucial, central. And I don’t know if you ever find out who you are. I think that is a theme in my own work. It’s not only, I think, in a national context, but also, of course, in very much more personal context too. The conflicts that arise within one’s own being has to be resolved. And indeed painting, pictures of conflict, resolves one’s own conflicts at times.
(Interview 2002 at the Iziko South African National Gallery https://vimeo.com/675964739)
Exploring the personal as well as the political, Adams produced a lifelong series of self-portraits, considering his own African-Indian heritage and identity.
The artist's estate.
SMAC Gallery, Cape Town, The Bonds of Memory, 9 April - 21 May 2016.
Private collection, Cape Town. Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity on a SMAC Gallery letterhead signed by Ted Glennon on behalf of the artist's estate, dated 9 April 2016.
Exhibitions
SMAC Gallery, Cape Town, Albert Adams: The Bonds of Memory, 9 April - 21 May 2016.
Rupert Museum, Stellenbosch, Albert Adams (1929-2006): A Fractured History, May - October 2017.
Wits Art Museum, An Invincible Spirit: Albert Adams and his Art, 1 April 2019 - 25 May 2019.
Literature
Martin, M. and Dolby, J., eds. (2008). Albert Adams: Journey on a Tightrope. Cape Town: Iziko South African National Gallery. Illustrated in colour on pages 85 and 116.