Collection: Blessing Ngobeni

Blessing Ngobeni (b. 1985, Tzaneen, South Africa) is a South African multidisciplinary artist based in Johannesburg. Born in Limpopo province, he moved to Johannesburg as a child and experienced severe hardship, including homelessness and imprisonment, experiences that deeply inform his art. He trained at Artist Proof Studio in Johannesburg. Working across painting, collage, sculpture, video and performance, he draws on Surrealism, Dada and Neo-Expressionism, with influences including Jean-Michel Basquiat and David Koloane. His large paintings, built from layered acrylic washes, exaggerated figures and collaged newspaper and magazine imagery, offer a critique of South Africa’s socio-political landscape, addressing corruption, inequality and the legacies of colonialism and apartheid. He received the Reinhold Cassirer Art Award in 2012 and the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Visual Art in 2020, and was included in Phaidon’s “Vitamin P3: New Perspectives in Painting” (2016). His solo exhibitions include shows at the Standard Bank Gallery in Johannesburg (2023), the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town (2024) and Everard Read galleries in Johannesburg, Cape Town and London. His work is held in collections including the Johannesburg Art Gallery and the Pérez Art Museum Miami. He also supports emerging artists through the Blessing Ngobeni Art Prize, a studio residency programme founded in 2016. The painting “Portraiture of Life” (2013), oil on canvas, offered by TUMO Gallery, is an early work from the period when his characteristic figurative language was taking shape.