BIOGRAPHY
NEIL ROGER
(b. 1941, Cape Town, South Africa)
Neil Rodger was born in 1941 in Mowbray, Cape Town. The artist lived and worked in the Eastern Cape, where he thrived on the austerity and solitude of the region until he died in 2013. It seemed that this environment was conducive to the enigmatic silence so characteristic of his finest work. None of the currently favored classifications apply to his work – rather, he belongs with those individual realists who have, throughout the modern era, defied categorisation.
What he pursued is a universality, timelessness and harmony that can be found in all great art from whatever period or place. It is a measure of his conviction of the continuity of great art that he remained unmoved by revolutions, fashions or attitudes. Regular trips to Europe reinforced his cultural connections, which are to the Mediterranean by inclination and to the Netherlands by training.
His work covers an unusually wide range of content and he worked in a variety of media in both painting and sculpture. The vehicle for this content was also in a perpetual state of flux, so that ever-new perceptions were evinced, be it of the portrait, of the nude, of the landscape, of the animal painting. For this artist, the quest for refinement and distillation never ceased.
I believe that pictures rarely benefit from commentary by the artist. In general I would say that whilst most good art has been extremely difficult and taxing in the making, it is a prerequisite of great art that this is not evident – that it appears effortless or even inevitable.
1968 -1974
Member of the Grahamstown Group
1966 -1967
Part-time lecturer in drawing and painting at the Cape Technical College
1967
Art Teacher, Wynberg Boys High School, Cape Town
1968 -1974
Lecturer in Fine Art, Rhodes University
1974 -1981
Lecturer, then a senior lecturer in fine art, Port Elizabeth Technical College
1981
Full-time artist
1980
Member of the selection board of the King George VI Art Gallery, Port Elizabeth
1963-6
Travelled throughout Europe
1971
Worked and traveled in United Kingdom, Netherlands and Spain
1986
Worked and traveled in United States of America and England
1987
Texas, United States of America where he did some portraits
1988
United Kingdom and Switzerland painting portraits
EDUCATION
1961-63 & 1966
Michaelis School of Fine Art, Cape Town
1963-66
Rijks Academie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam
1981-82
Rhodes University, Masters Degree in Fine Art, (cum laude)
AWARDS
1963
Max Michaelis (prize for painting)
1965
Merit Award (painting) Rijksakademie
1982
Five Roses Young Artist of the Year, National Arts Festival, Grahamstown
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
He has participated in numerous group exhibitions in South Africa and abroad since 1968
1968
Grahamstown Rhodes University (first of six solo exhibitions)
1973
Grahamstown Johan Carinus Art Centre
Port Elizabeth P.E. Technikon
1975
Bloemfontein Gallery 82
Kimberley William Humphreys Collection
1976
Cape Town Atlantic Gallery
1982
Grahamstown Settlers Monument Arts Festival
1982
Johannesburg Everard Read Gallery
1989
Johannesburg Everard Read Gallery
2000
Johannesburg, Everard Read Gallery
Permanent Exhibition at Everard Read Galleries, Johannesburg and Cape Town
COLLECTIONS
Throughout South Africa, USA, UK, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands, France, Portugal, Monte Carlo, Hong Kong, Namibia and Australia.
REPRESENTED
George Municipal Collection
Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Gallery, Port Elizabeth
SA National Gallery, Cape Town
University of Pretoria
University of Cape Town
Opera House, Port Elizabeth
William Humphreys Art Gallery, Kimberley