Gerard Sekoto: Fruit sellers, c.1939-40

In 1938 Sekoto’s father died, and he no longer had an obligation to fulfil his father’s wish for him to be a teacher.[2] The 25-year-old left his teaching post at the Khaiso school in then Pietersburg (Polokwane) and, at the beginning of 1939, went to Johannesburg. He moved to Sophiatown and found accommodation with cousins on Gerty Street. Living with his cousins he was, for the first time in his life, able to devote his undivided attention to his art and, during this period, he undertook a process of experimentation with technique and medium which contributed to his later success as a pioneer of South African Black Modernism.

In Sophiatown, Sekoto was introduced to Brother Roger Castle, a teacher and well-known patron of black artists. Brother Roger introduced Sekoto to his network of artists and gallerists including Joan Ginsberg, the owner of Gainsborough Gallery, with whom the young artist would later exhibit in 1939 and 1940.This came to be a pivotal moment in Sekoto's career as his reputation in Johannesburg began to grow following his first solo exhibition at the highly regarded gallery in 1939, which was met with great success, both critical and commercial. That same year he was selected to participate in the South African Art Academy's annual exhibition and, in 1940, he achieved the prestigious accolade of becoming the first black artist whose work was acquired by the Johannesburg Art Gallery.

Sekoto’s decision to leave teaching in rural Pietersburg (Polokwane) and move to the cosmopolitan urban environment of Johannesburg was a definitive one. According to Lesley Spiro, curator of Sekoto’s first major retrospective at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 1989, “Sekoto’s sojourn in Sophiatown was, from an artistic point of view, an extremely broadening and productive time. He produced a large number of works and expanded his repertoire of media to include poster and oil paints. It was also during this time that he first began exhibiting his works professionally”.[3]

The introduction to Joan Ginsberg proved to be a fortuitous encounter for the young Sekoto, connecting him with his contemporaries in the form of influential New Group painters such as Alexis Preller (1911-1975) and Judith Gluckman (1915-1961). These artists guided Sekoto in the technique of mixing oil colours on the palette and using the palette knife.[4] Both Preller and Gluckman played a crucial role in shaping his artistic journey: Preller generously gifted Sekoto his initial tubes of oil paint, while Gluckman trained him on applying this new medium to canvas.[5] Prior to this exposure, Sekoto had been working with 'poster paint' or body colour on brown paper because of the limited access he had to materials and formal training.

In Gluckman's studio, Sekoto learned about Western painterly techniques she had acquired during her education at the Witwatersrand Technical School in Johannesburg. Armed with these newfound skills and materials, Sekoto found inspiration in the inhabitants and architecture of Sophiatown in the late 1930s and early 1940s. This Johannesburg suburb's vibrant streets were predominantly populated by an impoverished black working class. Sekoto found the area's vitality to be a tremendous stimulus, a stark contrast to his rural upbringing in Botshabelo. He vividly described the scenes which created compelling backdrops for his artistic expression: “…the vitality of the area was a great stimulus. It was a theatrical scene seeing all these various types of people: women with baskets of shopping, some carrying baggage either on their heads or shoulders. Men of various styles of walking and clothing, some bicycle-riding or driving cars, although in those days car owners were rare in Sophiatown. There were also many children of varied appearance in attire and expression”.[6]