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Badsha started off his artistic career as a print maker, (he won a prize on the 1965 Art - South Africa - Today exhibition for one of his woodcuts) ; this was followed by charcoal drawings which show the influence of Dumile who was then living in Durban. These drawings are characterised by the use of swift, economic lines which capture the very essence of his subject.
Omar Badsha is best known as a photographer and activist, but his exhibition offers insight into a neglected era of South African art and culture.
This is not where the story begins, but it is where I’ll begin: 1949 in the Grey Street complex, Durban—the area also known as Coolie Town or the Casbah. It is the year of the Durban riots, when 142 people will lose their lives in a weekend of violence. Omar Badsha is four years old.
The Durban Art Gallery and South African History Online have announced the opening of Under the Umdoni Tree, an exhibition of the work of Omar and Ebrahim Badsha, on the 27th of January 2010.
Including over 70 paintings, drawings, and sculptures executed between the early 1950s and the late 1960s, this timely exhibition explores the rich but little-known history of artists and intellectuals that contributed to the tapestry of life in the Grey Street complex of Durban, one of the best known of Apartheid’s ghettos.
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