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(b. 1953) hails from Jan Kempdorp in the Northern Cape, and has lived in the southern outskirts of Cape Town since the early 1970s. Thyssen taught himself to carve wood at the Community Arts Project in the early 1980s. His often contemplative figures are influenced by modernist and African sources, as well as by social concerns.
From Against the Grain catalogue: “… Ishmael Thyssen’s works allude to broader social, political and cultural concerns… Cultural and political concerns are also evident in the theme of African identity that runs through Thyssen’s work. Classified ‘coloured’, Thyssen identifies wood as an African material, and it is through working with wood that he gives expression to his self-identity as an African… The synthesis between Western modernist and classical African sculpture can be seen in many of his works notably in the balance between naturalism (life-like representation) and abstraction … The expressiveness of the artists’ figures comes in part through levels of distortion that are defined by the material itself.”
