Kagiso Mautloa
Kagiso Patrick “Pat” Mautloa (b. 1952) is a renowned South African artist and pioneer of modernist South African painting. His work studies the street life around him and his studio at the Bag Factory (Fordsburg Artists Studios) in downtown Johannesburg. He also incorporates and draws inspiration from found and discarded objects. Mautloa is essentially an urban artist, drawing his inspiration from the Johannesburg street culture, the dynamics of the changing city and the people he encounters there. He was a founding member of the Fordsburg Bag Factory where he continues to work from his studio, filled with pieces of the urban debris collected on his daily walks through the city.
Kagiso Patrick “Pat” Mautloa (b. 1952) was born in a rural community to the west of Johannesburg. Like many South African families who left the countryside in search of work and city life throughout the twentieth century, the Mautloa family moved to Soweto and settled in Mofolo when Mautloa was two years old. He grew up in Soweto and received his primary and secondary education in the area, matriculating in 1973 from Morris Isaacson High School.
He received art lessons at the Mofolo Art Centre in the 1970s from artist Dan Rakgoathe, who encouraged him to develop his imagination through drawing. After school he enrolled at the Rorke’s Drift Art and Craft Centre to complete a Diploma in Fine Art. He was also involved in many of the local and international artists’ workshops of the ‘80s and early ‘90s, which helped a whole generation of black South African artists emerge onto the art scene despite the apartheid strictures imposed on them.
He is recognised as one of the pioneers of modernist painting in South Africa. His central theme is the study of life around him, particularly the street life of Johannesburg around his downtown studio. He works largely in painting, drawing, and printmaking, but often finds inspiration in the creation of new art from the refuse and discarded objects of the city of Johannesburg’s urban culture. These encounters and objects feature in his paintings and sculptures, characteristically depicted with bright colours, incisive abstraction, and fine draughtsmanship.
Kagiso Pat Mautloa collaborated with David Krut Workshop in 2008 on a drypoint etching titled Portrait. In 2004, David Krut Publishing released TAXI-009 Kagiso Pat Mautloa part of the TAXI Art Books Series, the first cohesive publications on contemporary South African artists that had started in 2000. This book was the first monograph on the work and provides an overview of Mautloa's work, as well as insight into his creative process and his central themes.
