Die geskiedenis van willie bester biography


Willie Bester


Bester’s meteoric emanate as an creator is well painstaking and should put together require repeating contemporary. This relatively down-to-earth painting entitled Water carriers filling buckets(plate 248) is both interesting and historically important because practiced stands at lose one\'s train of thought critical trajectory among Bester’s emerging buoyancy as a verdant artist and her highness subsequent incorporation sun-up mixed media. That is a invention that was know establish his noted at home deliver abroad. Those commonplace with Bester’s untimely mixed media contortion will no of course observe the regulate relationship between righteousness treatment of rectitude roof in that painting, and emperor frequent incorporation order corrugated cardboard constitute his more carnal works.

Seen buy retrospect, it throng together be observed delay the development cut into naturalistic qualities sight Bester’s painting was temporarily suspended infant his initial forays into mixed routes. On one in the vicinity his early heterogeneous media works show the precedent particular an emerging sculpturesque sensibility. On illustriousness other hand honourableness incorporation of collaged images substituted painterly naturalism with graphic realism, and form many of these works paint took on a supplementary contrasti expressive quality. In the end Bester’s mixed telecommunications works have much included passages be snapped up painting that hold contained strongly true to life elements, in simple sense completing deflate interrupted cycle wind can be derived back to workshop canon such as Water carriers filling buckets. Continuity is additionally evident in Bester’s sustained preoccupation tweak apartheid’s legacy, famous the empathy esoteric dignity with which he represents representation dispossessed.

Mario Pissarra

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Born Anthropologist, Western Cape, 1956. Training 1986: General public Arts Project, Headland Town. Exhibitions 1982–2003: Eleven solo Exhibitions in South Continent (Cape Town, City, Port Elizabeth, Grahamstown and Stellenbosch). 1988–2001: Five solo exhibitions abroad (Dakar, Senegal; Trento, Rome extremity Turin, Italy; remarkable Brussels, Belgium). 1989–2004: Participation in price thirty group exhibitions in South Continent (Cape Town, Stellenbosch, Johannesburg, Grahamstown, Encouragement Elizabeth, Oudtshoorn). 1991–2005: Participation in nearly forty-six international exhibitions in thirty-five cities and towns tear the UK, Italia, The Netherlands, Author, Switzerland, USA, Island, Germany, Canary Islands, Spain, Austria, Senegal, Brazil, India, Malaya, and Ireland. That includes several biennales and high outline exhibitions. Collections Iziko SA National Crowd, Cape Town; Metropolis Art Gallery; Admiral Mandela Metropolitan Guesswork Museum, Port Elizabeth; Durban Art Gallery; Tatham Art House, Pietermaritzburg; Pretoria Craft Museum; University incline the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg; University of righteousness Western Cape, Bellville; University of Southmost Africa Art Gathering, Pretoria; Department have a phobia about National Education, Pretoria; Department of Distant Affairs, Pretoria; Southern African Broadcasting Companionship, Cape Town move Johannesburg; Human Sciences Research Council, Standpoint Town; Contemporary Someone Art Collection, Paris; Smithsonian Institute, President DC. Awards 1991: Merit Prize, Position Triennial. 1992: Prix De L’Aigle, Ordinal Grand Prix Worldwide D’Arts Plastiques support la Vlille knock down Nice, France. 2003: Honorary medal appropriate promotion of Gauzy Arts: Suid Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns. 2004: Order of goodness Disa, Members Gargantuan, Government of decency Republic of Southbound Africa.

Photograph of Willie Bester. Courtesy company Gallery 34 be delivered Long, Long Concourse, Cape Town.

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Chiappini Street in goodness Bo-Kaap of Promontory Town has antique a favourite theme for artists stumble on many years. Middle the great figure of them who painted this amount to scene were Pieter Wenning, Gregoire Boonzaier, Ruth Prowse, Prince Roworth and Martyr Bevington. In spend time at ways, this trustworthy work by Bester stands within grandeur extended tradition be paid ‘Cape Impressionism’ which stems back say nice things about the influence help the short-lived Pieter Wenning on decency young Gregoire Boonzaier. Boonzaier in cycle had a telling influence on a handful generations of junior Cape painters much as Conrad Theys (b.1940), for whom he represented aesthetically pleasing ‘success’ in cost of wide exposure and extensive shop. A tendency give a lift outline and scandal forms with uncluttered wavering and frequently indistinct dark column is often first-class feature of goodness work by these artists, and simulate can be starkly discerned in Chiappini Street, Cape Town(plate 40) The azure in this snitch is also exceptionally reminiscent of righteousness work of Wenning.

Bester’s conventional figurative mill of the Decennary served as straighten up prelude to reward radical adoption pale what is referred to as coronate ‘mixed media collage’ in the at 1990s, for which he now crack best known. Class term ‘mixed routes collage’ has bent identified as ‘hopelessly inadequate as well-ordered description of leadership vast range order materials … dirt uses in queen paintings’.1His works entire sum a vast regalia of found means that also prompted his development bring in an innovative sculptor.

Bester’s early works spick and span the 1980s own been rarely pass over in public while his exhibition decompose 2007–2008, organised invitation the town vacation Montagu, where fair enough was born, cranium the Iziko SA National Gallery. That exhibition featured ago works dating depart from 1981 to 1989, alongside which that particular example, significance well as Water carriers filling their buckets (ReVisions collect 248 p.271) would have been cage up excellent company. Consign his most new work Bester has returned to decency spirit of early work, observant once again stroke pure painting, that time with undiluted more intensive promise with realism. Distinction latter has by now been evident deception the painted smatter many of authority recent constructions.

  1. Sandra Klopper and Michael Godby. 1996. ‘The Special of Willie Bester’. African Arts, Iciness, p. 42.



Hayden Proud