Simon Lekgetho
Simon Moroke Lekgetho was born in Schoemansville near Hartebeespoort Dam in 1929. Although he had some lessons in drawing at an occupational school in Mpumalanga, he was largely self-taught. He worked as a clerk for the Provincial Administration in Pretoria. He bought books on art techniques and studied them, but he also had some guidance from Walter Battiss and other artists. People who worked in the inner city of Pretoria remember him walking from door to door in the city, to lawyers’ offices (for example), and offering his paintings for sale. Some of his works still hang in such offices in Pretoria.
Often Lekgetho’s subject is healing. In the two paintings on these pages, he depicts the sangoma’s tools: the shells, animal bones, and divinatory tablets have been cast, and the sangoma has begun to decipher their message. A calabash holds the smoldering medicinal herb, mphephu. The scene is illuminated by strongly contrasting light and dark (called “chiaroscuro” in paintings), the light casting long shadows that seem to suggest a spiritual presence.