AfricaIs aCountry

'The Janitor'

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

'The Janitor'

By
Sean Jacobs

When the Johannesburg Art Gallery bought one of Mr. [Gerard] Sekoto’s paintings in 1940, they had to hire him as a janitor so that he could see his own art on display—circumventing the law outlawing black people from entering the country’s museums.

Now considered one of the most important 20th century South African artists, Sekoto left South Africa for Paris, France, in the late 1940s, where he died in 1993. In October 2009 his painting “The Milkman” (painted between 1945 and 1947) was sold for more than $542,000.

The Wall Street Journal.

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