The 75 Faubourg and Enrico Navarra galleries present the exhibition The Breath of Calligraphy by South African artist Dr. Esther Mahlangu, featuring a selection of acrylics on canvas created between 2010 and 2022. These works refer to the painter’s Ndebele heritage and celebrate «the contemplation of space and color, both omnipresent and intense: a calligraphy unique to Africa. [...] She [Mahlangu] shares with us the clear story of a life, translated through geometry and color into the language of art.” (Ruzy Rusike, exhibition booklet)
In the Ndebele community, the tradition of decorative mural painting is a centuries-old art reserved for women, with techniques passed down from mother to daughter, and carried out on the facades of houses during ritual ceremonies. From a very young age, Esther Mahlangu thus learned how to make pigments, prepare the surface to be painted, and create decorative compositions blending traditional geometric figures with invented motifs.
Dr. Mahlangu is revolutionizing this traditional art through the use of new techniques. She is thus the first to transfer this pictorial practice onto canvases and other contemporary mediums, replacing natural pigments with acrylic paints that are even more vibrant and contrasting. Using a feather, she paints freehand without prior sketching, on various and diverse formats and supports: canvases, walls, ceramics, cars (BMW Art Car Collection, 1991), motorcycles or sneakers (Eytys, 2015).
In the 1980s, while creating an open-air artwork at the Botshabelo village museum (Orange Free State, South Africa), she met the French gallerist André Magnin, who invited her to the exhibition Les Magicians of the Earth (1989) at the Centre Pompidou, a true turning point in her career, propelling her onto the French and European scene.
Following numerous exhibitions around the world, his works have entered major private collections (Larry Warsh, Jean Pigozzi, Oprah Winfrey, Usher, John Legend, David Bowie, Alicia Keys, etc.) and public collections (Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C., Brooklyn Museum in New York, Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town, etc.). In 2024, a retrospective will be dedicated to his work at the Iziko South African National Gallery before traveling to several prestigious museums worldwide.
The exhibition is organized in collaboration with Almine Rech, which will concurrently present works by Dr. Esther Mahlangu in its Paris showroom on rue de Turenne, and a solo exhibition in its London gallery.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Born in 1935 in South Africa, Esther Mahlangu learned Ndebele mural painting as a child from her mother and grandmother. Brought to international attention in 1989 by Magiciens de la Terre in Paris, in 1991 she became the first woman to design a BMW Art Car. Her freehand geometric patterns have carried this tradition into contemporary art. In 2023, Galerie 75 Faubourg and Galerie Enrico Navarra presented The Breath of Calligraphy.
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