All my paintings searched to rediscover an identity common to all people of different origins, to the quest for the common relation between beings.—Gerard Sekoto

Gerard Sekoto is without doubt one of South Africa’s major painters of the twentieth century. Considered increasi ngly as one of the earliest South African modernists and social realists, he completed his most memorable work during the early and middle years of the 1940s. When he left for Paris in 1947, he was at the height of his creative powers. He spent forty-five years as an exile in France, and during these often difficult times his talent, dedication, belief in the equality of all people and, most of all, his identity as an African sustained him. Chabani Manganyi’s biography is informed by the discovery, after Sekoto’s death, of a ‘suitcase of treasure s’, which contained previously unknown musical compositions, letters and a large quantity of notes, writings and private documents. Photographs and full colour plates of previously unpublished and significant paintings are included.

N. Chabani Manganyi is a clinical psychologist, biographer and non-fiction writer.