Peter Clarke

The Exhibition Room at the House, Caledon Museum, Western Cape, South Africa. With The Peter Clarke collection.

Peter Clarke (2 June 1929 in Simon's Town, South Africa – 13 April 2014 in Ocean View, Cape Town) was a South African visual artist working across a broad spectrum of media. He was also a writer and poet.

Early life

Clarke was born in Simon's Town near Cape Town, in 1929. Much of his work is inspired by that coastal village where he lived until 1972, when he was forced to move to Ocean View under the Group Areas Act. He left high school in 1944 and was a dock worker until 1956 when, aged 27, during a three-month holiday to Tesselaarsdal, a small farming village near Caledon in the South West Cape, he began his artistic career.

With assistance from his lifelong friend, poet James Matthews, Clarke held his first solo exhibition in the newsroom of the newspaper The Golden City Post in 1957. He said, "Before my exhibition, I was just another coloured man. Our people took it for granted that only whites could do such things. Now they are becoming aware of the fact that we can do these things too; that we are human beings!"

Education

1948: Technical College, Roeland Street, Cape Town, SA 1961: Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town – etching classes 1962-3: Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten – graphics 1978-9: Atelier Nord (Graphic Art Workshop) in Oslo

Art career Clarke was best known for his graphic prints, particularly his woodcuts, and in later years he moved into collage. He also used leather, glass, found objects and other mixed media. He used oil pastels for his art work “October Landscape”.

His artistic career spanned more than six decades and he produced a large number of works and appeared in many exhibitions. Described as a "quiet chronicler", his work offers a critique of South Africa's social and political history over 60 years.

He received six international and six national awards for his art and writing, and had more than 70 solo exhibitions since 1957 in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Australia, USA, Norway, Israel, Austria and the UK. He also had many group shows in South Africa, Yugoslavia, Germany, Brazil, Austria, Italy, USA, Argentina, Norway, Botswana, Japan, Switzerland and France. In 2005 he was awarded the Order of Ikhamanga (Silver) by President Thabo Mbeki, and received a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010. His 2011 exhibition was entitled Listening To Distant Thunder.

A major retrospective exhibition of his work, Wind Blowing on the Cape Flats, took place in London in 2013.

1955: Drum International Short Story Award 1965: Awarded the Accademico Onorario of the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno, Florence, Italy 1975: Elected Honorary Fellow in Writing, University of Iowa, US 1982: Diploma of Merit in Literature, Universita delle Arti, Italy 1983: Diploma of Merit in Art, Academia Italia 1983: Honorary Life Member of the Museum of African American Art, LA, US 1984: Elected Honorary Doctor of Literature, World Academy of Arts and Culture, Taipei, Taiwan

Key dates 1929: Peter Clarke was born 1957: Golden City Post, Cape Town, South Africa (first solo) 1960: Yugoslavia (SA Graphic Art) 1961: Galerie Schoninger, Munich, West Germany (SA Graphic Art) 1961: São Paulo Biennial 1963: 5th International Graphic Art Biennale, Ljubljana, Yugoslavia, Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria (International Graphic Art) 1964: Venice, Italy (Biennale) 1965: Mbari Cultural Centre, Ibadan, Nigeria (solo) Chem-Chemi Cultural Centre, Nairobi, Kenya (solo) 6th International Graphic Art Biennale, Ljubljana, Yugoslavia 1968: Palazzo Strozzo, Florence, Italy (First Exhibition of International Graphics) 1969: Palazzo Strozzo, Italy (Second Exhibition of International Graphics) 1970: Edrich Gallery, Stellenbosch (solo) 1971: SA Graphic Art touring Netherlands, Belgium and W. Germany 1972: Buenos Aires, Argentina (Tercera Bienal Internacional del Grabado) 1973: Shell Harbour Art Centre, Shell Harbour, NSW Australia (solo) Pratt Graphics Centre, New York City (group) 1973-74: Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, US (solo) 1976: Kuumba Workshop, Southside, Chicago, US (solo) 1977-78: SAAA, Cape Town (Our World is a Ghetto – solo) Community Arts Project, Mowbray, Cape Town (solo) Public Library, Grassy Park, Cape Town (solo) 1978-79: Sandvika Kino Vestibyle, Sandvika, Norway 1979–82: Atelier Nord, Oslo, Norway (Graphic Art – group) 1979: Pratt Institute, New York 1981: Atlantic Art Gallery, Cape Town (Illusions and Other Realities – solo) 1982: South African Art, National Gallery, Gaborone, Botswana 1983: Kanagawa, Japan (International Exhibition of Prints) 1984: SANG (Masterworks on Paper), Kanagawa, Japan (International Exhibition of Prints), Jerusalem Artists' House, Israel, Frederikstad, Norway (Norwegian International Print Biennale) 1985: FUBA (A Selection of Work by Distinguished Black Artists), Grenchen, Switzerland (X Internationale Triennale Fur Originale Graphik) 1987: Chelsea Gallery, Wynberg, Cape Town (solo), Campinas, Brazil (Bienal Internacional de Gravura), Museum fur Volkerkunde, Frankfurt, W. Germany 1990: Freedom Now, Namibian independence exhibition, Windhoek, Namibia 1992: Retrospective exhibition – The Hand is the Tool of the Soul, at Natale Labia Museum, Muizenberg, Cape Town 1994: 3rd Triennial World Exhibition of Prints, Auvergne, France 1995: 18th Triennial World Exhibition of Prints, Kanagawa, Japan 1996: Drawings of Tesselaarsdal, Caledon Museum 1998: Vital Expressions, Association of Arts Gallery, Bellville, South Africa 1999: Lipschitz Gallery – A Personal View, Cape Town 1999: Vital Expressions at Natal Technikon Art Gallery, Durban 2000: Bertolt Brecht House, Berlin, Germany 2000-01: City Press exhibition called Baggage 2001: Manuscript Exhibition 3 (Art Studio), Johannesburg 2001: Solo exhibition in Exeter, UK 2002: Collection of books at Natal Technikon, KwaZulu-Natal 2003: AVA, Cape Town: Surface=/=Print (part of Impact conference) 2011: Listening To Distant Thunder, The SA National Gallery