Title: Pimville location 1964
Medium: Oil on board
Dated and signed: 1964
Unframed: 76cm x 99 cm
Framed: 90cm x 113cm
Ngatane was known for his paintings that depicted scenes from everyday township life. The importance of this style of painting, often referred to as “township art,” was impressed on Ngatane by his friend Durant Sihlali that also studied at Polly Street. Sihlali formed the famous “weekend artists’ group” that consisted of several great Polly Street artists like Sydney Kumalo, Louis Maqhubela and Ephraim Ngatane. Together they recorded the township environment using watercolour as introduced to them by Skotnes. Sihlali was deeply motivated by the conviction to record the living conditions of his people and went wherever people were being evicted, relocated or struck by disaster to record events. Ngatane and the young Maqhubela was more interested in experimenting with fragmented shapes and moved towards abstraction.
