Dumile Feni South African, 1939/42-1991

Much of the life and the origins of the artistic talents of Dumile Feni (1942–1991) are veiled in mystery — even his birth year remains unconfirmed. Dumile was born sometime between 1939 and 1942 in the small town of Withuis in Worcester. Until his twenties, he was largely self-taught until he came into the circles of Bill Anslie, Cecil Skotnes, and the Badsha family in Durban. Dumile is widely considered to be one of the most skilled and compelling proponents of a style of politically-motivated late-modernist expressionism, which most of his contemporaries intentionally avoided for the risk of attracting attention from the dreaded Security Branch of the then South African Police.

Dumile Feni’s personal life was one of hardship and poverty. As a young man, he contracted TB and was regularly in and out of hospitals. His art is filled with emotionally charged portrayals of life in South Africa under the oppressive apartheid regime. Art historians including Edward de Jager, Mario Pissarra, and Ivor Powell claim Dumile to have been one of Africa’s greatest late modernist artists. Or, as Prof. Anitra Nettleson writes, ‘he was a great African artist of the twentieth century, perhaps one of the greatest African artists of this period.’ His talents as an artist are in many senses summed up by Prof. John Peffer, who argued that Dulime ‘extended the expressive distortion of the human form to its imaginative limit.’

While living in Johannesburg in the 1960s, Dumile was regularly described as the ‘Goya of the townships’. His drawings of the terrors of apartheid not only became the objects of celebration but also state scrutiny. In 1968, due to the threat of arrest, he decided to go into voluntary exile in London. In London, he was picked up by the Grosvenor Gallery and had exhibitions at the Camden Art Centre. In 1979, he left for New York, where he occasionally exhibited but largely worked as a graphic designer. He died suddenly in New York while pursuing his love for jazz at his favourite music store, Tower Records. His work became hugely influential and is often noted to have been an inspiration for the likes of William Kentridge.