Cyril Coetzee
Cyril Coetzee is a professional artist whose paintings have been displayed internationally. Fascinated by the intersection of cultures, beliefs, myths, and history, Coetzee creates art that is both deeply personal and reflective of current social issues. He often employs the human figure as an expressive tool—sometimes even with a touch of parody—which ties into his ongoing passion for portraiture. While his style feels familiar, it stands out as truly original.
Cyril Coetzee is a full-time artist who has exhibited his paintings internationally. 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 the 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.
