PAUL DU TOIT - A Painter's Journey

By Kevin Martin  

Fernwood Press, 2004. Hardcover with dustcover, 112 pages.

Excellent condition. The dust cover has small tears at bottom corner (spine and back). The binding is tight. Neat and clean.

South African painter Paul du Toit by-passed the conservative art school and opted for studying art as a private student of Jean Welz. This fortuitous affiliation launched a very successful career and a lifetime friendship with the great Welz. Du Toits first exhibition was with Welz in 1945 in Cape Town. His journey had begun and never flagged until his death in 1986. Artist Beth Bailey whom he married in 1951 accompanied him on that painterly journey. Du Toit is best remembered for his very expressionist, colorful landscapes, often painted en plein air. His canvases were a fresh departure from the more restrained, formalistic paintings seen in South African at the time. The Du Toits spent three years in Paris in the mid-1950s during which time Paul developed a more abstract painting style, quite at variance with his landscape paintings of South Africa. Returning to South Africa in 1958, Du Toit resumed painting expressionistic landscape-inspired works, known as the Current series, but now infused them with much more colour and light. From 1968 to 1974, the Du Toits lived in London, where Pauls work took another dramatic turn toward abstraction. He also began using pen-and-ink and acrylic instead of oil. In 1976 the Pretoria Art Museum mounted a major and successful retrospective exhibition of Paul Du Toits work. His final series of paintings in the early 1980s were minimalist, weightless, and pale. Author Kevan Martin, a neuroscientist, was a friend of the artists and an art collector since undergraduate days. He and Paul carried on a dialogue on art from 1972 until Pauls death in 1986.