Fikile Magadlela

{{Short description|South African Artist}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}

{{notability|date=September 2023}}

{{Infobox artist

| image = Fikile portrait.jpg

| image_size = 220px

| birth_date = 13 December 1952

| death_date = 2003

| nationality = South African

}}

Fikile Patrick Magadlela (13 December 1952 – 2003) was a visual artist of the Black Consciousness movement in South Africa, recognized for his art's mystical and poetic quality,{{cite book

| last = Hill

| first = Shannen L.

| date = 2015

| title = Biko's Ghost: The Iconography of Black Consciousness

| publisher = University of Minnesota Press

| pages = 18–21

| isbn = 9781452944302

}}{{cite journal

| last1 = Peter

| first1 = Judy

| date = 22 Sep 2015

| title = Mediating Interactions between Representation, Meaning and Language: 'After Math': An Exploration of Temporality, Wounding and Consequence

| journal = Third Text

| volume = 29

| issue = 3

| doi = 10.1080/09528822.2015.1076210

| s2cid = 146482699

}} also noted for "subversive" and political art.{{cite journal

| last1 = Dubin

| first1 = Steven C.

| date = November 2010

| title = South Africa Report: Exiles' Return

| journal = Art in America

| pages = 73–74

}} He has been called an "African surrealist."{{cite journal

| last1 = Hill

| first1 = Shannen

| date = November 1, 2018

| title = Creating Consciousness: Black Art in 1970s South Africa

| url =

| journal = Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art

| volume = 2018

| issue = 42–43

| pages = 196–210

| doi = 10.1215/10757163-7185869

| s2cid = 192570202

}}

He was born in Newclare, Johannesburg South Africa. He started drawing on his parents’ walls from as early as he could remember.

Reading books his father bought and getting knowledge from older people. He dropped out of High school in standard 8 (10th grade) to work as a full-time artist. Magadlela was relatively self-taught but he spent many hours with fellow artists exchanging ideas and techniques.

Magadlela worked closely with artists such as Ezrom Legae, Solly Maphiri, Winston Saoli, Percy Sedumedi, Pietro Cuzzolini and Harold Jeppe who became his mentor, introducing him to art circles in Johannesburg.

His most renowned work was entitled “Birth of The Second Creation” a series of drafted, mystical landscapes showing an African man and woman in flowing drapery and overwhelming clouds.

Later Magadlela would do bolder landscapes with similar characters using more colour and poetry.

His first exhibition first solo exhibition was at the Goodman Gallery then owned by Linda Givon in 1978.

Berman Gallery 1992.

Retrospective at the UNISA Art Gallery 1995

Magadlela died 2003