Collection: Andrew Verster

Andrew Verster (1937 – 2020) obtained a National Diploma in Design (1959) from the Camberwell College of Art, London, and an Art Teacher’s Diploma (1960) from Reading University, UK. Verster was a Fine Arts lecturer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and the Durban University of Technology until 1976 when he gave up academia to focus on being a full-time artist. In 2009, DUT awarded Verster with an honorary doctorate for his remarkable work in the arts.

Celebrated in the visual arts, design, fashion and theatre, Durban’s beloved Andrew Verster (1937 – 2020) was a man who lived his art as a painter, sculptor, writer, playwright and poet. Also recognized an arts activist, he used political aesthetics that challenged traditional boundaries and hierarchies. He was a forerunner of the LGBTQI movement, using his work to advance the rights of queer people and artists. This was of personal significance as Verster’s own identity as a gay man, while rarely fore-fronted for public discussion, held substantial influence in his work throughout his career.
Bold, vibrant colour, seemingly eclectic symbolism and dynamic, richly decorated forms are all part of the vocabulary that make up the artist’s unique visual language. These constructs abound in this contemporary curation of work from the artist’s estate that celebrate Verster’s distinctive mark making. The exhibition showcases a range of works in which his repetitive, deliberate strokes blossom almost accidentally into complex and delicately balanced compositions.
Describing his process, Verster once explained, “I’d start somewhere and I’d plot this little oasis of marks, of black. And then there’s this huge nothing of white. And it’s frightening. Then I’d plot another little oasis here and then I’d have to find a path between the two – which would be another object, another idea, a pattern, or… just changing the shape of the white so that it became a thing in its own right.”