Acclaimed as one of the world’s greatest botanical gardens, and set against the eastern slopes of Cape Town’s Table Mountain, Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden has provided the title for the paintings of Gavin Jantjes known as the Kirstenbosch Series (2023). The gardens emphasise the cultivation of indigenous plants for all South Africans, so the implication is that the series is about South African identity and roots.

“To be Free” is a retrospective of artist Gavin Jantjes and his largest solo presentation in the UK to date. The Kirstenbosch series within the larger collection of prints and paintings is the current evolutionary phase of the artist which is non-figurative and follows his earlier portrayals of the global Black struggle for freedom.

The mood that the paintings create is the tranquillity and the repose that you experience when you are in a botanical gardens

The theme for the Kirstenbosch series is presented as the artistic search for freedom. The gallery also suggests that the Kirstenbosch series offers “an open ended, unencumbered invitation to audiences to rethink their relationship to painting in an increasingly globalised art world“.

One is struck by the flowing, sinuous lines and shapes reminiscent of the natural forms of flowers and plants. The artist’s imagination has picked out the dimensions of nature’s beauty and South Africa’s beauty in such an elegant and original way. The pale and pastel colours of the forms are said to evoke the feelings of personal and creative freedom and they are indescribably lovely when you see the paintings up close.

The mood that the paintings create is the tranquillity and the repose that you experience when you are in a botanical gardens, as well as the wonder and the awe that you feel when you experience nature. This impression derives from that pastel colour scheme and the mesmerising dance of the flowing lines of the forms.  Perhaps the idea with these paintings is the idea of South Africa as one of the world’s most beautiful gardens. If the gardens are carefully tended and their beauty is brought out, then they create the most wonderful and beautiful thing of all – freedom, personal, creative. Freedom not just for the individual but also for the community. For the citizen.

What beauty can surpass the beauty of freedom? This is the awe-inspiring experience of seeing the current phase of the artist fighter against racism, apartheid and oppression. The emotional relationship that is created for the viewer to the mature expression of the dream that has structured the artist’s life – the quest for absolute freedom. The freedom that we find in the botanical gardens – freedom from men that make themselves arrogant gods on earth with assumed and arbitrary racial superiority. If there is an art of freedom, this is it. If there is an art that is a solution to restlessness, this is it. If there is an art that is dynamic with its flowing lines and full of life, the life of nature, this is it.

The paintings, are non-figurative because although they are tied to a specific place with the gardens, they aim at an eternal longing of the human through time: peace and freedom. Happiness. The bliss of being in the garden. Where beauty and life and triumphant and fill us with energy.

The awe-inspiring productions of a great man. Something that art has always promised but seldom delivered. The gift of living and being that we chase after our whole lives.

About the Artist

Regarded as one of the most significant living artists from South Africa, and hailing from District Six, Cape Town, South Africa, Gavin Jantjes was born in 1948. Painter, curator, writer, lecturer – a number of varied and diverse roles with a big cultural impact make up his professional work. Currently, his life is divided between Norway, South Africa, and the UK. Jantjes was active in criticism of the apartheid regime and was granted political asylum in Germany. For the most part, his activity as an artist has been as a nomad within Europe and through the identity given by exile. Often, his works have been reference points in the thinking about apartheid and freedom of expression.