Karlien de Villiers | |
---|---|
Born | December 22, 1975 Cape Town, South Africa |
Area(s) | Artist |
Notable works | My Mother was a Beautiful Woman |
Awards | UNESCO-Aschberg Bursary for Visual Arts |
https://karliendev.wixsite.com/karliendevilliers |
Karlien de Villiers (Cape Town, December 22, 1975) is a South African artist. She is the author of an autobiographical comic book entitled My Mother was a Beautiful Woman, about her childhood and the time of apartheid, seen from a white family. She has also produced several paintings and sculptures. From 2006 to 2017, she was a lecturer at the Stellenbosch University, where she herself studied drawing and illustration from 1994 to 1997. Previously, she lectured at the University of Pretoria (2003–2006). Since 2019, she has been a lecturer in Design, Illustration and Art Direction at Stellenbosch Academy of Design and Photography. [1]
Born in 1975 in Cape Town, from a white middle class [2] [3] [4] background, she was not really aware of apartheid during her early childhood. “For a long time in my childhood, I didn't question a fact: that white people dominated, had the best jobs and the best schools, and laid on beaches separated from black people. Our parents told us that it was normal for all the domestic workers to be black", she explains. She was 11 when her mother died of cancer. She and her sister were sent to a boarding school and encountered other backgrounds: "in the midst of my misfortune, I discovered that I belonged to the privileged class". [3]
After high school, she continued from 1994 in an art school at Stellenbosch University and there learned drawing and illustration from Conrad Botes and Anton Kannemeyer. They introduced her to bande dessinée European comics. She then published her drawings and childhood anecdotes in the comics magazine Bitterkomix . [3] She graduated from Stellenbosch University in 1997, with a degree in graphic design. [4] She worked for a short time in a design studio belonging to the Ogilvy & Mather group. After traveling abroad for some time, she moved from Cape Town to Johannesburg, then to Pretoria. She then worked as a freelance illustrator and resumed post-graduate studies at the University of Pretoria, which she finished in early 2006 (Academic Honors, Master's Degree, Information Design). [4] [1]
Anna Sommer , passing through South Africa, discovered De Villiers' drawings and encouraged her to publish an album, recommending a publisher. [2] This resulted in an autobiographical comic book, first published in Switzerland (in German), titled Meine Mutter war eine Schöne Frau (My mother was a very beautiful woman), about her childhood memories, relationships with her sister, her parents' separation, and the apartheid era, told from the perspective of a white family in South Africa at the time. [2] [5] [6]
Continuing as an artist, making paintings and sculptures, she has also worked as an illustrator for children's literature, and as a lecturer in her initial art school at the Stellenbosch University. [2]
Stellenbosch is a town in the Western Cape province of South Africa, situated about 50 kilometres east of Cape Town, along the banks of the Eerste River at the foot of the Stellenbosch Mountain. The town became known as the City of Oaks or Eikestad in Afrikaans and Dutch due to the large number of oak trees that were planted by its founder, Simon van der Stel, to grace the streets and homesteads.
Stellenbosch University (SU) (Afrikaans: Universiteit Stellenbosch, Xhosa: iYunivesithi yaseStellenbosch) is a public research university situated in Stellenbosch, a town in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Stellenbosch is the oldest university in South Africa and the oldest extant university in Sub-Saharan Africa, which received full university status in 1918. Stellenbosch University designed and manufactured Africa's first microsatellite, SUNSAT, launched in 1999.
Judith Mason born Judith Seelander Menge was a South African artist who worked in oil, pencil, printmaking and mixed media. Her work is rich in symbolism and mythology, displaying a rare technical virtuosity.
Maria Elizabeth Rothmann, penname M.E.R. was an Afrikaans writer, and co-founder of the Voortrekkers youth movement. Her unique contribution to Afrikaans literature was an ethical didactic, cultural historic review of a bygone Afrikaans society.
Arnoldus Christiaan Vlok van Wyk was a South African art music composer, one of the first notable generation of such composers along with Hubert du Plessis and Stefans Grové. Despite the strict laws imposed by the Apartheid government during his lifetime, van Wyk's homosexuality was ignored by the authorities throughout his career due to the nationalistic nature of his music.
Maria Magdalena Laubser was a South African painter and printmaker. She is generally considered, along with Irma Stern, to be responsible for the introduction of Expressionism to South Africa. Her work was initially met with derision by critics but has gained wide acceptance, and now she is regarded as an exemplary and quintessentially South African artist.
Anton Kannemeyer is a South African comics artist, who sometimes goes by the pseudonym Joe Dog. Kannemeyer has lectured the University of Pretoria, Technikon Witwatersrand, and was also a senior lecturer at the University of Stellenbosch.
Christo Coetzee was a South African assemblage and Neo-Baroque artist closely associated with the avant-garde art movements of Europe and Japan during the 1950s and 1960s. Under the influence of art theorist Michel Tapié, art dealer Rodolphe Stadler and art collector and photographer Anthony Denney, as well as the Gutai group of Japan, he developed his oeuvre alongside those of artists strongly influenced by Tapié's Un Art Autre (1952), such as Georges Mathieu, Alfred Wols, Jean Dubuffet, Jean Fautrier, Hans Hartung, Pierre Soulages, Antoni Tàpies and Lucio Fontana.
Moses Kottler (1896–1977) was a South African painter and sculptor. He is widely regarded, along with Anton van Wouw and Lippy Lipshitz, as one of the most important South African sculptors. This triumvirate had the distinction of also having excelled at using pictorial media; Lipshitz with monotypes and Van Wouw in painting and drawing. Kottler's work in oils earned him additional consideration as a painter.
Johannes Albertus Munnik Hertzog was a South African politician, Afrikaner nationalist, cabinet minister, and founding leader of the Herstigte Nasionale Party. He was the son of J. B. M. (Barry) Hertzog, a former Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa.
Jacob Abraham Jeremy de Villiers was a judge of the Appellate Division from 1920 to 1932 and Chief Justice of South Africa from 1929 to 1932.
Katie Skelly is an American comics artist and illustrator. She is best known for her graphic novels My Pretty Vampire, Maids, and Nurse Nurse.
Mary Sibande is a South African artist based in Johannesburg. Her art consists of sculptures, paintings, photography, and design. Sibande uses these mediums and techniques to help depict the human form and explore the construction of identity in a postcolonial South African context. In addition, Sibande focuses on using her work to show her personal experiences while living through Apartheid. Her art also attempts to critique stereotypical depictions of women, particularly black women.
Faith de Villiers was a South African dancer, producer, choreographer, teacher, company director, and adjudicator. Active primarily in the northern province of the Transvaal, she is recognized as one of the most influential pioneers of ballet in South Africa.
Deborah Bell is a South African painter and sculptor whose works are known internationally.
Nicole Claveloux is a French painter, illustrator and comic book artist.
Mira Falardeau is a French Canadian historian, professor, and author of comic strips. Falardeau has devoted works to Québec animated films, Québec comic strips and caricatures in Québec, focusing on visual humour in all its forms. She taught as a professor of cinema and communication at Laval University and the University of Ottawa. Falardeau has also curated exhibitions in the visual arts and operated a small publishing house.
The Nederburg awards for ballet and opera in South Africa were established in 1972. Previously, the arts across the South African provinces were assisted by the Stellenbosch Farmers' Wineries Trust, which commissioned drama, opera and ballet and offered bursaries to students. One of the ballets financed by the Trust was David Poole's Kami in 1976. The Oude Libertas Study bursary also allowed dancers such as Veronica Paeper, Dudley Tomlinson, June Hattersley to study overseas.
Suzanne Ballivet was a French draughtswoman and illustrator. She is best known today for her erotic illustrations of works by Pierre Louÿs, Alfred de Musset, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, and others. According to the Benezit Dictionary of Artists, Ballivet is considered a 20th century "pioneer" in the genre of erotic book illustration.