“Born Milwa Mnyaluza “George” Pemba in Korsten, Port Elizabeth, in 1912, Pemba is most known for his paintings depicting scenes of township life under apartheid and his exquisite portraits of Xhosa individuals. Mostly self-taught, Pemba’s artwork features varying styles.
Encouraged by his father to paint at a young age, South African artist George Pemba’s childhood was filled with a deep love and incredible talent for drawing and painting. He was known to turn walls into murals and create portraits of those around him. In 1924, Pemba won a Grey Scholarship which allowed him to continue his post primary education at the Paterson School. Here, the young Pemba would nourish his love of art through reading, and later began drawing portraits in exchange for money.
At the age of 16, Pemba entered an art competition which he won.
After earning his Teacher’s Diploma at the Lovedale Training College in the Eastern Cape, in 1931, Pemba began working for the Lovedale Printing Press. Leaving this job in 1936, Pemba was awarded a bursary from the Bantu Welfare Trust and studied at Rhodes University for five months under the tutelage of art instructor Professor Austin Winter Moore. In 1941, Pemba received another bursary and spent two weeks at Belgian-born South African painter Maurice van Essche’s studio in Cape Town, attending art classes. A few years later, in 1944, Pemba secured his second grant from the Bantu Welfare Trust and used this to tour South Africa, documenting portraits of people living across the rural areas of the country – from Johannesburg, Durban, and rural Natal, to Basutoland and Umtata in his home state.
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In the 1930s, several of Pemba’s paintings were accepted for an exhibition of “Negro and Bantu Art” in Port Elizabeth. Following this, and after being encouraged by fellow artists John Mohl and Gerard Sekoto, Pemba decided to become a full time artist – despite the lack of support from the South African art world at the political height of apartheid. During this time, many of Pemba’s paintings depicted the harsh realities of black under apartheid, chronicling the hardship of life in both urban and rural areas.
He held his first solo exhibition in East London in 1948 – the same year that D. F. Malan, considered one of the greatest champions of apartheid, won the South African national election under the banner of ‘Swaart Gevaar’ (Black Danger/Peril), a propagandist policy that promoted ignorance and fear of black people. A few years earlier, in 1944, Pemba had expressed his passion and dedication to his work, and the need to persevere despite racial stigmas, by saying, “I do not know if ever I will become a great artist, but an artist of my own nation I surely am to be…”.
And indeed, this semi-prophetic prophecy would be fulfilled as he continuously managed not only to be a full-time artist, but to hold successful exhibitions throughout his life. Pemba was posthumously awarded the Order of Ikhamanga in Gold, three years after his death in 2001, for his “pioneering and exceptional contribution to the development of the art of painting and literature.” -Dynamic Africa (Tumblr)
A special thanks to Mr. Emmanual Adama for pointing me in the direction of this artist.
