IN MEMORIAM: 30 years on: Remembering Bill Ainslie, a great South African artist who died too soon

The only public sign these days of the presence of the artist and teacher Bill Ainslie is the rare emergence of single paintings on auction. He died in a car accident 30 years ago this month, leaving behind a body of work, memories of his much-loved Art Foundation and the respect expressed by so many different people whenever his name crops up. He did not live to witness the release of Nelson Mandela from prison, nor was he there to participate in the democratic election of 1994.

Ainslie’s figures were located in mundane and everyday situations, such as mothers with their tiny children; children at play, watching and doing chores; men waiting for employment, and women walking with bundles of washing on their heads. The memory of that honey-odour of creativity in Ainslie’s establishment led to the understanding in the 1980s by Serote and his close associates in the ANC in exile, of the importance of arts centres for people who were confined in multiple ways by their situations in townships and rural villages.

With Joseph Beuys, Ainslie regarded workshops as forms of social art in themselves where alternative ways could be discovered, and untried areas could be explored. The practice was augmented with seminars, discussion groups, poetry readings, music, lectures, slide shows and the influence of diverse visitors.

With the enforced departure of Dumile, and his meeting with Douglas Portway, a South African artist who lived abroad, Ainslie sought new direction for his paintings in answer to the challenge of being an artist in a systemically and structurally unjust society.

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