This Day in History: March 5, 1943
Additional Date: March 5, 1943
South African artist Mmakgoba Helen Sebidi was born in Marapyane (Skilpadfontein) in the Hammanskraal area. Her grandmother, a traditional artist, was her first teacher. She studied with John Mohl while also studying and teaching pottery and clay sculpture at the Katlehong Art Centre in Germiston and in Alexandra. She sold many of her paintings at the art fair, Artists under the Sun, in Joubert Park. Sebidi was a figurative painter working in oils until she began to experiment with abstraction and collage. She described this change in her work: "First I kept on drawing figures in the studio, feet, hands, portraits; and I kept all this rubbish from the whole year piling up on the carpet. At the end of the year I said to myself, 'I want to see if I can grow these up', I took myself away from other people - I said 'Now break all this in pieces and see what comes out."
In 1998 she was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to travel to the USA and exhibited her work at the Worldwide Economic Contemporary Artists Funds exhibition.