Blue Gum Trees

This woodcut titled, Blue Gum Trees is by the South African artist Gregoire Boonzaier (1909-2005). The woodcut shows Blue Gum trees that are growing skew, in the way they are blown for their entire existence by the winds in the Cape. 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.. The University of Pretoria has thirty of his renowned works in the art collection.