Mizream Maseko

Mizream Maseko (also documented as Mizraim, Mizriam, Mizram) was born on 10 June 1927. Maseko began his career as a house painter after completing his studies in Transvaal. He was inspired by the artworks in the houses he painted and took up painting designs and pictures on scarves in a small shop. He was discovered there by John Mohl, who taught him basic principles and techniques. He read Groenewald’s book about leather paintings and tried this medium and in 1972 his work was included in a calendar. This resulted in a period of experiment with staining, painting and embossing imported modelling hide. The result was a series of paintings executed on leather, one of which is Man smoking a Xhosa-style pipe (1960). The use of pronouncedly blue tones as highlights on the skin of the man in this painting, as well as the golden yellow hue of its background, suggests the possible influence of the kitsch ‘ethnic portraits’ of the popular South African painter Vladimir Tretchikoff (born 1913) whose work Maseko might have seen in the commercially-available framed reproductions in the white households where he worked as a house painter. The non-specificity of the beadwork configurations and other elements in this portrait make the identification of the sitter as a Xhosa male impossible to determine.

Several monochromatic watercolours in sepia are also featured in the Campbell Smith Collection. Maseko’s choice of monochrome in these works implies the influence of Gerard Bhengu (qv.), whose work he must have seen. Portrait of a man with a feathered headress, which is signed but not dated, makes use of several watercolour techniques ranging from pale washes in the background to darker ones in the wet-in-wet dilineation of facial details. Contrasted to this is the use of a dry-brush technique to articulate the feathered headress and the fur on the garment the man is wearing. On the basis of these observations on the handling of the watercolour medium, it seems possible to attribute a similar but hitherto unidentified watercolour in the Campbell Smith Collection to Maseko. Maseko later became a deacon in the Zionist Church and moved to Polokwane (Pietersburg) in Limpopo Province where he eventually died at the age of 67.