WORLDWIDE
ERIK LAUBSCHER
« ….we cannot drive through South Africa without thinking of the landscapes in terms of Erik Laubscher paintings. Just as we cannot look at one of his paintings without remembering the landscapes from which they came from in South Africa. »
André P Brink, South African writer.
Erik Laubscher represents all that is vital and important in South African art. He was not only a brilliant artist but also in the heart of art action, a spokesman, teacher and personality.
His canvases have been selected for 4 Biennales in Venice and Sao Paolo. At the 1966 Venice Biennale his works received votes for a UNESCO prize. Several works are part of the South African National Gallery, Pretoria Art Museum, Rembrandt Art Foundation and Wits and U.C.T. collections (see ABOUT page).
ARTWORKS
Erik began drawing at the age of seven inspired by the mountains around Tulbagh in the Western Cape in South Africa. His parents encouraged him to study architecture. But when he moved to Cape Town at the age of twenty he chose to study art under Maurice van Essche a well known Belgian painter. He started to find his own distinctive style in the early 50's and never stop exploring art on various supports.
DRAWINGS
By introducing courses in photography, I had the opportunity of persuing my interest in black & white photography, both as an art form and separately to provide information for my sketches.
Erik Laubscher
A MAN OF ACTION
‘The angry man of South African Art’
I think we’ve all been privileged having someone like Erik and with him, Claude, in our midst, to be able, after so many years, not just to say goodbye, but to celebrate, to be thankful, for what we are saying goodbye to. I say ‘what’ because it is not just the person or the couple, it is the whole legacy, it is the whole world of art which they kept vibrant and which they kept alive in our minds through all these years. And that makes the memory a very and incredibly special one which cannot be supplanted by anything else, which cannot be replaced by anything else…
André Brink South African author
« Laubscher’s contribution lies not only in his creative paintings, but in every field connected with art, like activism, at which he was always in the forefront, and in art teaching. »
Dr Hans Fransen - A Life in Art SMAC Art gallery.
'Erik has not always been only a painter, or he has shown that only being a painter does not only mean applying paint to a specific surface at a specific time.
He’s always been, as it already has been said, a ’mench’...
Erik had to seriously start to providing for his wife and newborn daughter, Michèle, the sales of his work not being at all sufficient.
He discussed taking over the Continental School of Art with it’s previous owner and teacher...
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