District 6

This woodcut titled, District 6 is by the South African artist Gregoire Boonzaier (1909-2005). The woodcut shows the part of Cape Town that was called District 6. It was demolished by the Apartheids Government. Boonzaier was one of the artists that created numerous artworks on the subject and was very vocal against the demolishing of the buildings in the area. 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.