Exhibition: SIMON STONE | A Retrospective Exhibition
Artist: Simon Stone
Venue: Standard Bank Gallery
Dates: 10 July – 14 September 2013
Over a prolific career, Stone has built an impressive reputation as a painter. This exhibition identifies him as unique amongst other South African painters.
Best described as a lyrical and narrative Neo-Expressionist, Stone is renowned for his various stylistic approaches, such as natural realism and symbolic collage. He juxtaposes different genres (portraiture, landscapes, cityscapes, seascapes, nudes, still-lifes and domestic interiors) in paintings constructed around multiple images that provide vivid and poetic accounts of his own personal journey. Flashbacks to the troubled history of South Africa are interspersed with evocations of fabled works of art, legendary cities, beautiful women, and memories of the Cape, Johannesburg, as well as small towns and the lonely highways and byways of his beloved Karoo. He creates a semi-Surrealist, alternative world that is beautifully painted and layered with complex meanings, recurring motifs, personal metaphysics and a strange sense of the mundane. Stone&rsquo ;s paintings have been described as “unashamedly traditional – with a twist”.
Stone graduated from the Michaelis School of Fine Art in 1976 and later continued his education in Italy. He was a vital influence on, and part of, a generation of painters during an important era of South African art in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. Since 1978, he has exhibited widely, both locally and abroad.
The location of this exhibition in Johannesburg is particularly significant as in 1980, when Stone and his wife Giovanna Biallo Stone relocated there. He gained a reputation for his grittily evocative paintings of the city. This earned him the nickname of “the inner city poet” of Johannesburg.
A lesser known aspect of Stone’s oeuvre is his extensive sketchbooks which he began in 1984, and which now number 87 volumes. Each volume consists of about 500 pages and the total number of sketches amounts to over 44,000. These great tomes, which supply motifs for his paintings, are an integral part of his legacy and a selection of these will be on view at the Standard Bank Gallery.
This exhibition is accompanied by the publication of the first extensive monograph on Simon Stone’s life and work. Entitled Simon Stone: Collected Works, it is authored by Lloyd Pollack and published by SMAC Art Gallery.
This exhibition runs until 14 September 2013, at the Standard Bank Gallery, corner of Simmonds and Frederick Streets, Johannesburg. The Gallery (Tel: 011 631 4467) is open Mondays to Fridays, 08:00-16:30; on Saturdays, 09:00-13:00; and is closed on Sundays and public holidays. Admission is free.