The ‘Jazz and Blues at Night’ exhibition of the collection of paintings and collages by illustrious South African artist Sam Nhlengethwa in London’s Cork Street gallery is a visual story in celebration of the black maestros of Jazz, including Nina Simone and Sonny Rollins and South African jazz icons Miriam Makeba and Ron Carter.

Sixty-five-year-old Nhlengethwa, a lifelong fan of Jazz, has always showcased his passion for the classical music genre through his figurative paintings and creative collages. He received the Standard Bank Young Artist Award in 1994 and his award show ‘Homage to Jazz’ traveled the country over the following year. His childhood and adolescence in the black township mining town of Payneville, Springs, south-east of Johannesburg, and his academic and artistic sojourn in Johannesburg have him exploring themes common to everyday life in South Africa, the street life, domestic interiors, and the influence of mining in his artworks.

Ironically, as influential as Nhlengethwa and his works are in the South African art scene, his work has received rare visibility in London even though he had exhibited in the US, South America, Italy, and China; it is this deficit that the ‘Jazz and Blues at Night’ exhibition in London aims to address. The exhibition will include several portraits and jazz scenes, tapestries, and a listening station where visitors can sit back and relax and choose from a selection of Nhlengethwa’s renowned collection of classic jazz albums on vinyl reputed to be the largest on the Continent.

A large number of the works on display will be paying homage to South Africa’s jazz scene, which was shaped and created from black suffering and struggle and flourished in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s in the urban spaces of the Townships. According to South African poet Don Mattera, jazz in South Africa brought back “[a] history that was both painful and beautiful, bringing us face to face with giants who came in all shapes and sizes, the ‘dwarfs’ and the ‘walk talls’ blowing mean melodies and drumming up storms … Yes it all happened in ‘Toeka’ – city slickers (klevas and moegoes) doing jazz like it was some kind of escape from the harsh cold-face realities.”

Some of Nhlengethwa’s major exhibitions include a major survey exhibition, titled Life, Jazz and Lots of Other Things, hosted by SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia in 2014, which was then co-hosted in Atlanta by SCAD and the Carter Center; Constructions: Contemporary Art from South Africa at Museu de Arte Contemporanea de Niteroi at in Brazil in 2011; Beyond Borders: Global Africa at the University of Michigan Museum of Art in 2018; the 12th International Cairo Biennale in 2010; the 8th Havana Biennial; 2013 Venice Biennale; and the 2015 Beijing Biennial. 

The ‘Jazz and Blues at Night’ exhibition will run from 12 August - 25 September 2021.