Ezrom Legae
{{Short description|South African sculptor, draughtsman (1938–1999)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
Ezrom Kgobokanyo Sebata Legae (1 June 1938 – 5 January 1999) was a South African sculptor, draughtsman, and teacher. He is considered a foremost draughtsmen, and sculptor from South Africa.
Life and career
Ezrom Kgobokanyo Sebata Legae was born on 1 June 1938 in Vrededorp, Johannesburg.{{Cite book |last1=Watkins|first1=Gavin Graham |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EB4t0AEACAAJ |title=The Sculptures of Sydney Kumalo and Ezrom Legae: A Catalogue Raisonné |last2=Skinner |first2=Charles |date=2023 |publisher=Strauss & Company |isbn=978-0-6397-6015-5 |language=en}}{{cite journal |last=Peffer-Engels |first=John |date=1999 |title=In Memoriam: Ezrom Kgobokanyo Sebata Legae, 1938-1999 |journal=African Arts |publisher=UCLA James S. Coleman African Studies Center |volume=32 |issue=3 |pages=17+85–86 |jstor=3337706}} He was educated at St Cyprian’s Primary School in Sophiatown, then at Madibane High School in Diepkloof, Soweto. Legae studied at the Polly Street Art Centre beginning in 1959; from 1960 until 1964 he attended the Jubilee Art Centre and worked with Cecil Skotnes and Sydney Kumalo.{{Cite web |title=Ezrom Legae |url=https://africa.si.edu/exhibits/insights/legae-artist.html |website=National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution}} When Sydney Kumalo retired from his teaching post at the Jubilee Art Centre in 1964, Ezrom Legae replaced him first as an assistant and then as a co-director of the Centre.
In 1970 he received a scholarship that allowed him to travel to Europe and the United States; between 1972 and 1974 he was director of the African Music and Drama Association Art Project.
Legae worked full-time as an artist; he lived in Soweto with his family until his death.
Legae is best known for his powerful visual commentaries on the pathos and degradation of apartheid - a critique he extended to the persistence of poverty and racism in the post-apartheid years. He excelled as painter and sculptor of figures, heads and animals working with oil, conté, bronze, clay and mixed media.
References
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External links
- [https://www.kumalo-legae.org/ Official website]
- [http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ezrom-legae.html South African History Online]
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Category:20th-century sculptors
Category:Artists from Johannesburg
Category:South African sculptors
Category:South African contemporary artists
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