Title: Man on a township street
Medium: Oil on board 1974
Unframed: 55.5cm x 43cm
Framed: 73cm x 61cm
Man on a township street, was painted when Sekoto was living with Marthe Hennebert in her apartment in Paris. The room and big studio space provided much needed security and enabled him to focus on his art instead of surviving through playing piano in bars through the night (Lindop:91-93).
Sekoto was unable to sever those deep ties which bound him to the place of his birth. This inability to cut his ties would be Gerard Sekoto’s dilemma until the day he died. The work produced in Paris retained as its main subject life in South Africa. “I called it two worlds. I was not being nostalgic but was trying to put one foot on Africa and the other in the street I was living in, Rue des Augustins, still not dividing myself – just remaining as one” – Gerard Sekoto (Dolby 2005:24).
