Blikkiesdorp

This work titled in Afrikaans as "Blikkiesdorp" (1940) or squatter camp is by the South African artist Gregoire Boonzaier (1909-2005). The work shows corrugated tin roof houses on the South African West Coast in the 1940s, as he held an enduring historic interest of the Cape regions of South Africa. Short Biography: Gregoire Johannes Boonzaier was born in 1909 in Newlands, Cape Town. He studied at the Heatherley School of Art in London. Boonzaier was a highly vocal artist about the history of the Bo-Kaap and District Six in Cape Town and was against the Group Areas Act of the 1950s. Boonzaier is seen as the father of the Cape Impressionism, a local stylistic form related to the western Impressionism school. His artworks range from still life paintings, landscapes and portraits and he often contributed the struggle against apartheid in his subject matter prolifically as a founder of the New Group in 1938 with other South African artists such as Walter Battiss, Lippy Lipschitz, Freida Lock and Terence McCaw. Boonzaier passed away in 2005 in Cape Town.