Albert Adams (b. 1930, d. 2006): An obituary
by Marilyn Martin
Albert Adams died of lung cancer in London on December 31, rather suddenly and unexpectedly and at a time when a retrospective exhibition at the Iziko South African National Gallery and the Johannesburg Art Gallery was being discussed. Born in Johannesburg, Adams had lived in London since 1960. South Africa offered him much confusion, frustration and pain - from the time that he had to sneak in and out of his mother's domestic worker room as a child to being refused entrance to the Michaelis School of Fine Art because of the colour of his skin and the vicissitudes of life in Cape Town. There were, however, positive and formative influences - an art teacher and principal at Livingston High School in District Six, German friends of Irma Stern who recognised his talent and encouraged him, art classes with Peter Clarke and at Hewat College.
Adams won a scholarship to study at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, left in 1953 and never looked back. Another scholarship took him to the University of Munich in Germany and a time with Oscar Kokoschka in Salzburg, Austria. He produced prints in studios in the United Kingdom and South Africa and participated in exhibitions in those countries, as well as in Belgium, Brazil, Germany and Yugoslavia. He was a lecturer at the City University in London for 18 years, retiring in 1997.
While being a second class citizen in his country of birth during the apartheid years, Adams' prodigious talent was recognised. Neville Dubow reviewed his first solo exhibition in Cape Town in 1959 and observed that it was '� remarkable for two things - the pronounced technical ability to express himself fluently in several media, and more particularly the tremendous emotional intensity behind that expression. The combination of these qualities is rare in first exhibitions. They speak in this case of a talent well above the ordinary and a training to match' (The Cape Argus, October 30, 1959). Cape Town Harbour in the Iziko South African National Gallery permanent collection dates to this year.
Adams' 1960 exhibition in Cape Town comprised graphics and watercolours; again Dubow referred to his '�brilliant expressionist technique' and compared the quality and intensity of his etchings to that of the great Spanish artist Francisco Goya. The influence of Kokoschka was profound, as was that of Francis Bacon and Picasso. Adams spoke of the tightrope that an artist walks between the emotions which direct the creativity and the objectivity required in the development of the work. Informed by his training and fuelled by his long, self-imposed exile, Adams managed this walk throughout his creative life.
The political awareness that he acquired at Livingston High School, the disillusionment and the sense of alienation remained with him, yet he never lost sight of the present and the relevance of art to society. This was revealed in an exhibition at the South African National Gallery in 2002, where Adams showed recent paintings and works on paper. The series called Celebration alluded to the Kaapse Klopse, but they were anything but jolly, festive, celebratory works; on the contrary, the mask-like, distorted faces were angry and menacing. Created in London between 2000 and 2002, all the works referred to post-apartheid South Africa and the challenges, dangers and threats that came with political change. Adams' most recent works, shown to us at the National Gallery only a few months ago, were powerful comments on the war in Iraq.
We salute a great artist, whose passing seems untimely, too soon somehow. Yet we are grateful for a body of masterly works left behind, works that will continue to challenge, enrich and move.
Marilyn Martin is the director of art collections at Iziko Museums of Cape Town
