Biography
Cyril Coetzee received his art training at Rhodes University in Grahamstown. He furthered his studies abroad at the Tobias School of Art in Sussex and the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland. Coetzee has served as a Fine Art lecturer at Port Elizabeth Technicon and as an Art History lecturer at University of the Witwatersrand. He has been a full-time artist since 1990. Coetzee is deeply interested in the meeting and cross-pollination of cultures, beliefs, mythologies and histories. Both intensely personal, yet often reflecting contemporary social events and concerns, his works make striking use of the human figure as a vehicle of expression and, sometimes, parody – aspects related to his ongoing interest in portraiture. His work is strikingly familiar in its style, yet unparalleled in its uniqueness. Living and working in South Africa, Cyrill Coetzee’s, emblematic paintings received momentous acclaim in the 1980’s. He has completed several major painting commissions and his work is held in private and public collections in South Africa and abroad. He was invited to paint the largest commissioned canvas in South African History, measuring a phenomenal twenty-eight meters square. It now hangs in the William Cullen Library, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.