Gallery 101

In 1961, the Swiss Fernand Francis Haenggi (b. 1934, Dijon, France) and his mother Mrs F.M.L. Haenggi founded Gallery 101 to showcase modern South African art.  The original location was next to the Head Office of the Progressive Federal Party in the Rand Centre in the Johannesburg CBD. In the late 1960s the gallery expanded its premises and opened two additional branches, one at Hyde Park Corner and another on Hollard Street, close to the then Johannesburg Stock Exchange, Sandton. The new branches catered to Johannesburg’s increasingly decentralised business districts. Artists such as Maggie Laubser, Lionel Abrams, Judith Mason, and Walter Battiss held solo exhibitions at the gallery, whilst works by Robert Hodgins, tapestries from Rorke’s Drift, Edoardo Villa, Daniel Rakgoathe, Tommy Motswai, Wopka Jensma, Kevin Atkinson, Durant Sihali, and John Muafangejo featured prominently in group exhibitions.  In May 1964 the gallery curated a show Mozambique: Some of its artistic aspects, which included ten artists from Mozambique, with the aim to extend the exhibition roster to include artists from the rest of the continent.

After certain differences in policy of directorship the three branches of Gallery 101 split and became separate entities – in 1972 the Hyde Park branch was to be maintained by Fernand Haenggi and renamed Gallery 21, whilst the gallerist’s mother took over the Hollard Street space and named it accordingly - Madame Haenggi’s Gallery, which continued to be active until its closure in 1977.  The original premises of the Rand Central Branch kept its original name until its closure in 1974.  During the 1970s Gallery 21 opened a short-lived London branch on Grafton Street in Mayfair, which until its closing in 1976 was the sole commercial gallery from South Africa with a satellite space in Britain, exhibiting works of contemporary South African artists alongside young European artists such as Fabian Peake & Phyllida Barlow (shown 1975).  African Art from South Africa, a group exhibition of Galley 21 London in February 1975, included works by Dumile Feni, Luis Maqhubela, Leonard Matsoso, Stanley Nkosi, Lucky Sibiya, and Sydney Kumalo, highlighting important Black artists of the time, some in exile.  In South Africa the gallery relocated from Hyde Park Corner to Fox Street (1977-84), and then to Harrison Street until its final closure with the younger Haenggi retiring to Basel, Switzerland in 1993. 

Under the auspices of the Haenggi Foundation Inc., Fernand organised two major retrospectives in Johannesburg during 1979, one by Norman Catherine at the then Rand Afrikaans University (R.A.U.), and one by Lucas Sithole which travelled from R.A.U. to the Pretoria Art Museum, Pretoria.  Haenggi would in 1987 open the Pelmama Academy Soweto, a tertiary college for visual and performing arts in Mofolo, Soweto, with an Eastside Campus in Troyeville. The former integrated into the Manu Technical College in 1993, and the later into the National School of the Arts by 1996.