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Esther was first person to transfer Ndebele style of mural painting to canvas

Dr Esther Mahlangu was born in 1935 on a farm outside Middelburg.

July 4, 2019

Middelburg Observer 2 minutes read

Following traditions passed down from her mother and grandmother, she learned traditional Ndebele wall painting and beadwork as a child. She became an expert in executing murals as a teenager, using a range of paint colours.

Between 1980 and 1991 she lived and worked at the Botshabelo Historical Village, an open-air museum of Ndebele culture near Middelburg, Mpumalanga.

In 1986, researchers from Paris, who were travelling the world to document traditional arts, saw the paintings on Mahlangu’s house. They invited her to create murals for an exhibition of international contemporary art, the Magiciens de la Terre. She travelled to France in 1989, stayed there for two months, and painted a house in front of thousands of spectators.

She also decorated a wall inside the AngoulÁªme Museum of Fine Arts and showed her work at other locations in France. In 1990 she began to paint murals for public venues, soon followed by Europe and the United States.

Mahlangu was the first person to transfer the traditional Ndebele style of mural painting to canvas. She painted her geometric patterns on a BMW 525i in 1991, becoming the twelfth artist and first woman to take part in the BMW Art Car Project, after figures such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. In the years that followed she exhibited work in countries around the world.

With the goal of preserving her cultural heritage, Mahlangu started an art school in the backyard of her home in Mabhoko in the KwaMhlanga.

Her awards include the South African government’s Order of Ikhamanga, silver class, in 2006, as well as the Mpumalanga Arts and Culture Award, an award from the French Ministry of Culture and two awards from Radio Ndebele.