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Vivian van der Merwe.
[P132] 07/14 Homage to my Dutch Ancestors Oil on board 60 x 50 cm 2014
Vivian Hubert van der Merwe (born 29th May, 1956 in Cape Town, South Africa) is widely regarded as one of South Africa's leading living painters.
Biography: Vivian van der Merwe spent his early childhood in Cape Town before moving to the Transvaal province of South Africa in 1965. He was the middle brother of five (Andre, George, Vivian, Peter and Marius). His father, Hubert van der Merwe (1925-1977), an engineer by profession, migrated between various industrial appointments in many different regions of South Africa. Consequently Vivian attended nine different schools prior to completing his secondary schooling in the small mining town of Nigel in 1975. He has often commented on this as valuable experience, giving him insight into the complex and diverse nature of South African culture. His mother, Connie van der Merwe (1925-2004), a medical nurse by training, chose to remain a mother and housewife. She practised amateur painting intermittently for some years and her drawings, watercolours and oil paintings demonstrated an aptitude for figurative art.
In 1973, whilst living in the coal mining town of Dundee in northern KwaZulu-Natal, Vivian befriended local artist, Vuminkosi Zulu (1948-1996) a resident print-maker at the Rorke's Drift Art Centre at Isandlwana). Under the mentorship of Vuminkosi, Vivian produced a series of politically charged pen and ink drawings expressing outrage at the injustices of Apartheid. These formative experiences of the political and cultural conflict on the East Rand and in KwaZulu-Natal shaped his convictions about the relationship between art and politics in South Africa. After 1976, the year of the so-called Soweto uprising, he consciously abandoned political narratives in his art in the belief that Apartheid could only be terminated through direct and forceful political activity and not through through endeavours in fine art. In the years that followed, however, he remained actively involved in several community arts projects in black townships in South Africa.
After completing his secondary schooling Van der Merwe was drafted into compulsory military service in the South African Air Force for one year in 1976. In 1977 he enrolled for full-time Fine Art studies at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town. He thereafter completed his Master of Fine Art Degree in 1985. Throughout his undergraduate and postgraduate studies, Namibian born South African painter Stanley Pinker (1924-2012). reference/s?), was his main teacher and mentor. From 1985 until 2012 Vivian occupied various studio lecturing positions in Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Stellenbosch whilst pursuing his art career. In 1988 he married artist Fiona Jane Metcalfe and in 1990 their daughter Erin was born, followed in 1992 by the birth of Anna Jane. Since 2005 Vivian has lived and worked in the small rural community of Jamestown on the outskirts of Stellenbosch. In 2012 he left academia permanently in order to dedicate himself to his painting career.
Career Overview: Vivian van der Merwe's early work, from the mid-1970's until the mid-1980's, demonstrated a deeply considered affinity with the so-called Formalist aspect of twentieth century European and Russian painting. Working within the genre of still-life painting, he used the formal elements (shape, light, texture, pictorial space, proportion, etc.) provided by his still-life subjects to progressively abstract these forms. His work has frequently been compared with that of the early twentieth century Parisian Cubists (especially from the so-called 'Synthetic Cubist' period, the Italian still-life painter Giorgio Morandi and British painter Ben Nicholson, stylistic influences which Van der Merwe readily acknowledges.
From the mid-1980's onwards he consolidated his distinctive style of abstraction and produced several large-scale works during his decade in Port Elizabeth. During this period his painting frequently leaned towards greater minimalism but throughout his career Vivian van der Merwe has persistently retained the forms and subjects of still-life as an essential part of his painting process.
From the 1995 until 2012 Van der Merwe's work further explored and eroded the traditional boundaries between figurative and non-figurative painting but throughout this period still-life remained the leitmotif in his work. From the late-1990's onwards Vivian van der Merwe increasingly asserted that the Modernist and Postmodernist distinctions between figurative painting and non-figurative painting were outmoded rhetorical constructs which were useful in creating stylistic hierarchies in art discourse but had little or no value in the act or process of painting itself. His belief that visual intelligence expressed through painting is not readily 'explained' is perhaps best summed up by the philosopher Prof Bert Olivier:
"He is acutely aware of the long history of the concept of form in art as well as in philosophy and theology, which dates back to ancient Greek times and still plays a crucial role in modern science, contemporary aesthetics and theory. Despite this fact, or perhaps precisely because of it, his art is predicated on the possibility of the rediscovery of the true meaning of form in that silent realm beyond contemporary preoccupations with the semiotics of language. For this reason Vivian eschews politically engaged or 'narrative' art in favour of the genre which allows him the greatest freedom and experimental range with regard to formal or structural possibilities, namely, still-life. Paradoxically, however, instead of proving to be morally sterile formalism, his treatment of form establishes its autonomy in a way that does not leave our moral sensibility untouched. In the final analysis, therefore, his works are a powerful reminder that art opens up a fissure in the obviousness of the everyday – an opening within which new possibilities dislodge what is merely given." (GIVE REFERENCE: Prof Bert Olivier, 'A Selection of Eastern Cape Art', pub 1994, Bird Street Publications, ISBN 0-620-18534-1