Anton Smit | Featured Sculptor
Anton Smit started his relationship with Benguela Galleries at Benguela Cove Wine Estate. Guests can enjoy seeing his 7m bronze Faith sculpture at the estate. Or, visitors in the UK can enjoy the Walk of Life Exhibition at Leonardslee Gardens and Art Talks at Mannings Heath Golf and Wine Estate.
Anton likes to imbue his work with an illusion of movement or gesture, bodies curling up or limbs reaching out to the onlooker, inspirational “action figures” projecting tremendous emotion, a call to movement.
He works with metals and stones, also creating a unique iron and polymer cast mixture, which combines metal with several other mediums.
Visit, Reflect and Experience
We all need to be reminded every single day how beautiful things around us can be, if we take time out to notice them.
“These artforms embrace the rich heritage, natural produce and talent in South Africa. The terroir is celebrated through exceptional wine, local produce is honoured with delicious food, and now the art of a master South African Artist will also graces our premises.” - Penny Streeter OBE
Faith
2021
BRONZE
I lift my eyes to You,
to You whose throne is in heaven.
In complete submission to God.
– Anton Smit | Psalm 123:1
The Walk of Life Exhibition at Leonardslee
‘The Walk of Life tells a story that takes the visitor on a journey of self-discovery.’ An extensive outdoor exhibition of Anton Smit’s contemporary sculpture and life works created over a period of almost fifty years. On display for the first time in the UK, this ambitious exhibition of over eighty individual sculptures features significant pieces from Smit’s practice that represent different eras of the artist’s life, all of which are for sale.
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About Anton Smit
Anton Smit is a celebrated South African sculptor. Widely revered for his overwhelming heads and monumental African sculptures, evoking themes of suffering, reconciliation, glory and sublimation, his works grace public and private collections countrywide and internationally.
Spoken verse, the echoes of emotive lyrics and the rasping of sculptures in progress are customary sounds emitted from his studio. Larger than life, Anton Smit is the embodiment of poetry, an apt term for this sculptor, derived from the term “making”.
“Man himself then is mouthpiece, medium and meaning all in one, and his challenge as an artist is to create himself over and over again, finding new connotations and new concepts in given shapes, figures and faces. Man emulates and assimilates nature, producing poetry in word and form.”
Some observers have noted that this is why so many of his pieces, even the most abstract ones, manage to communicate powerfully and emotionally and why his work is possessed of a raw, earthy power that feels innately African. His body of work comprises towering human figures, nudes, impressive heads, masks, hands, angels, floating and stretching figures, warriors as well as abstract works, using mostly steel, metal, fiberglass and bronze.
Anton spends and works the first three months of the year in his Cape studios in Strand and for the rest of the year in his studios at Bronkhorstspruit Dam, where he oversees a dedicated work force of 16 people. “We are like family.”
Anton Smit in his creative prime is a force to be reckoned with.