Sculptor Anton Smit was born in the Transvaal town of Boksburg, South Africa, in August 1954. He entered his first sculpting competition at the age of sixteen, and won the first prize. Completely selftaught, the sculptor was awarded the first prize in the SA Association of Arts' New Signatures Competition in 1979.
Following successful exhibitions in Nelspruit, White River, Cape Town and Pretoria, Smit turned to sculpting full-time to cope with the demand for his work by galleries and private collectors alike.
With works permanently on display at the Pretoria and Pietersburg Art museums and major art galleries across the country, and the Anton Smit Sculpture Museum at the Millennium Art Gallery, Groenkloof, Pretoria, the artist is fast becoming one of South Africa's prominent sculptors.
During 1990, international recognition came in the form of exhibitions in Rome and Milan, an invitation to exhibit in New York and Hong Kong as well as a return exhibition in Italy in 1993. More exhibitions have followed in Bonn, Washington, Singapore and Koln.
A N T O N S M I T
The Life and Times of a South African Sculptor
Widely revered for his overwhelming heads and monumental sculptures,
evoking themes of suffering, reconciliation, glory and sublimation, his
works grace public and private collections countrywide and internationally.
“Spoken verse, the echoes of emotive lyrics and the rasping of sculptures
in progress are customary sounds emitted from his studio.Larger than
life, Anton Smit is the embodiment of poetry, an apt term for this sculptor,
derived from the term “making“. Anton forms his own language through
sculpture, the manifestation of his passion for expression and his
profound faith.”
-Kathleen Thomas, Art Curator
“What distinguishes the creative person is his persistence and
determination to excel.”
-Rhoma Ochse
Anton collects sayings about the relationship between art and the individual
artist’s experience of reality. “Art is not to render the visible but to render
visible,” he asserts, and his art achieves this in many ways. An inspiring
raconteur, Anton enjoys relating tales of his struggles as a young artist.
The secret to his success could be attributed to his courage and determi-
nation to forge ahead in the face of great difficulty.
“Take big risks. Don’t fret about what others think.
Do the most difficult thing on earth for you
– do it for yourself – this approach paid off in spades.”
-Anton Smit
“Creation continues incessantly through the medium of man,”
Anton believes. “Man himself then is mouthpiece, medium and meaning
all in one, and his challenge as an artist is to create himself over and over
again, finding new connotations and new concepts in given shapes,
figures and faces. Man emulates and assimilates nature, producing poetry
in word and form.”
Some observers have noted that this is why so many of his pieces, even
the most abstract ones, manage to communicate powerfully and emo-
tionally and why his work is possessed of a raw, earthy power that feels
innately African. His body of work comprises towering human figures,
nudes, impressive heads, masks, hands, angels, floating and stretching
figures, warriors as well as abstract works, using mostly steel, metal,
fiberglass and bronze.
Anton likes to imbue his work with an illusion of movement or gesture,
bodies curling up or limbs reaching out to the onlooker, inspirational
“action figures”projecting tremendous emotion, a call to movement.
He works with metals and stones, also creating a unique iron and polymer
cast mixture, which combines metal with several other mediums.
Anton spends and works the first three months of the year in his
Cape Town studio in Strand and for the rest of the year in his studio at
Bronkhorstspruit Dam, where he oversees a dedicated work force of
14 people. “They are like family.”
