High Organizes First US Museum Exhibit for South African Artist Ezrom Legae

“Ezrom Legae: Beasts” explores the oppression of the apartheid era through the expressive power of art • June 13-November 16

This summer, the High Museum of Art will present “Ezrom Legae: Beasts,” the first major museum exhibition in the United States for celebrated South African artist Ezrom Legae (1938-1999).

The more than 30 works on view address apartheid in South Africa through form and metaphor, exemplifying the ways in which Legae — like other artists at the time — used coded visual languages to subvert and endure tyranny.

“The poignant symbolism in Legae’s work reminds us of the expressive power of art, especially for those living through oppression,” said the High’s Director, Rand Suffolk.

“Through this exhibition, we are bringing new attention to Legae’s art in the United States, and by extension, telling a story of 20th century South Africa, which is particularly timely as we enter the third decade after the end of apartheid.”

The artist’s life and work

Legae’s life was set against the backdrop of many groundbreaking moments in South African politics and art history, not least of which was the establishment of apartheid in 1948.

He was just 10 years old when he witnessed the National Party win federal elections and instill the system of racial and ethnic segregation that later became a centerpiece of his career’s subject matter.

His personal narrative began to weave through other historic local events, including the opening of the Polly Street Art Centre in 1949 — one of the only places for Black artists to receive training — where he studied beginning in 1959.

After apartheid was established, many artists in South Africa contended with its corresponding oppression and bodily violence by presenting the human figure in animal form or abstracting it.

This exhibition focuses on Legae’s own bestial compositions, with each work an imaginative study articulating the artist’s political consciousness of his surroundings while living in South Africa’s apartheid era.

Legae’s harrowing drawings of beasts not only depict his encrypted visual messages but also exemplify common through-lines in works of that era: animals traditionally sacrificed (such as goats and chickens) serve as allegorical figures for activists who endured sacrificial violence and suffering under apartheid. Larger beasts, such as bulls and contorted horse-like creatures, represent the autocratic government and agents of said violence.

Occasionally dropping the metaphor, or otherwise bravely bridging the connection between his animal forms and the human condition, Legae sometimes depicted surreal humanoid forms or created works that blatantly critiqued apartheid, as is the case in his depiction of South African activist Steve Biko.

About the exhibition

The exhibition foregrounds two decades of the artist’s career — the 1970s and 1990s — each groundbreaking periods in South African political history.

Mounting unrest and anti-apartheid protests in the 1970s, such as the Soweto uprisings, were met with increased imprisonment (often without trial and including solitary confinement), exile and violence against both activists and civilians.

This period is considered Legae’s most prolific, in which he produced pencil, ink and charcoal depictions of animals as covert representations of apartheid’s players and the impact apartheid had on the country. The artist produced substantially fewer pieces until the 1990s, when he reemerged during South Africa’s political transition.

“Legae’s personal narrative weaves through sites for non-white creative development under apartheid, such as the Polly Street Art Centre and Jubilee Art Centre, in addition to the Amadlozi Group and Goodman Gallery,” said Lauren Tate Baeza, the High’s Fred and Rita Richman curator of African Art.

“Thus, this exhibition not only introduces American audiences to Legae but to the arts ecosystem of 20th century Johannesburg while further positioning South Africa appropriately within the 20thcentury art historical canon.”

“Ezrom Legae: Beasts” will be presented in the Works on Paper Galleries in the Lower Level of the High’s Wieland Pavilion, June 13 through November 16.

For more information or to purchase tickets, visit high.org.