Gavin Jantjes
By Salah M. Hassan

More than five decades of the diverse and distinctive practice of the UK-based South African painter and printmakerThrough over 100 prints, drawings, and paintings, as well as archival material, the publication celebrates Gavin Jantjes (1948) as a significant artist, and critical agent of change, while tracing his development as a painter, printmaker, writer, curator and anti-apartheid activist.Published on the occasion of Jantjes’ largest retrospective, which was inaugurated in Sharjah, UAE, and London, UK to date. Structured into chapters spanning the 1970s to the present, Gavin Jantjes: To be Free! A Retrospective 1970 - 2023 focuses on pivotal phases in the artist’s life, from his formative years in Cape Town, South Africa during the early years of apartheid regime (1948–1994), his transformative role at art institutions in the UK, Germany and Norway, his compelling figurative portrayals of the global Black struggle for freedom, to his recent transition to non-figurative painting. Jantjes’ journey embodies a quest for artistic emancipation, marked by a search for an autonomous form, freed from Eurocentric traditions and the limited expectations of Black creativity.The book also focuses on Jantjes’ influence on the cultural landscape of London. His anti-apartheid print series A South African Colouring Book was shown at the ICA in 1976, and his role as both exhibiting artist and co-curator in the ground-breaking 1986 Whitechapel Gallery exhibition From Two Worlds cemented his position as a major voice in the UK’s arts scene.