Paul du Toit

Biography

In 1992 the South African Paul du Toit travelled to Florence and saw Michelangelo’s “David”. He came back, as his biography has it, “fired” with the wish to make art in earnest.

Until then his life had been going in another direction.

Paul Johan du Toit was born on 31 October 1965 in Johannesburg and grew up in Mayfair. His childhood was divided between his father’s workshop and the house of his aunt, the artist Elizabeth van der Sandt. In the workshop the boy built sculptures out of electrical gadgets, while his aunt taught him the techniques of oil painting. He matriculated (finished secondary school) in 1984, and in 1985 he was conscripted into the South African Air Force. In the army he did carpentry, cast his first bronze, a model of an airplane, and studied computer science part-time by correspondence at Pretoria Technikon. After his service he worked as a computer programmer. In 1988 the company he worked for went into liquidation, and he took a dull job at a bank. All this time he painted at night, to keep his skills alive.

Two years after Florence, in 1994, he went to Paris. Behind the Louvre he was struck by a group of sculptures made of polyurethane foam, metal drums and plastic. Back in South Africa he began making sculptures in his garage from discarded materials. One of them won him the prize for “Best Artist with No Formal Training” from the Association of Arts in Bellville, Cape. Later, in a studio in Hout Bay, he moved to impasto: a thick industrial paste into which he scratched lines and images. This technique became the basis of his manner of “automatic scribbling”. He used his knowledge of computers to reach the international art scene through the internet.

He sold his first paintings at home in 1997. That year he also launched a website, and a Paris gallery owner who noticed his work invited him to exhibit in 1998. His decision to make art a career coincided with a group exhibition at the Groot Constantia Art Gallery. In 1998 his work was shown in several countries, he appeared on “CNN International Art Club” and held his first solo exhibition in Paris. In 1999 there were shows in Moscow and Edinburgh, and local companies bought his work.

In 2000 he was chosen as one of the “70 over 2000”; the sources say little about the selection, and I could find no details. After that came a solo and a group exhibition in Cape Town, and shows in the Netherlands and France. His wooden sculptures began in the same year.

In 2001 he was nominated for the Florence Biennale of Contemporary Art: three sculptures were selected, and he took fifth place in the sculpture section. The city of Florence honoured him with a medal. He was also nominated for the South African DaimlerChrysler sculpture award, and in 2002 for the international version of the same award. That year he held two solo exhibitions, at the Holland Art Fair in The Hague and in Cape Town. Later he was invited to work with Nelson Mandela and musicians on the 46664 campaign.

Paul du Toit died on 9 January 2014, at the age of 48.