Albert Adams

Arthur Albert Hugh Adams was born in Johannesburg on 23 June 1929. At the age of four he moved with his mother and sister to Cape Town. He attended Livingstone High School where he was encouraged to study art. After matriculating he applied to the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, but was refused entrance because of the colour of his skin. Instead, he began work as a window dresser and qualified as a teacher at Hewat College.

Adams is represented in public and private collections in South Africa and abroad. The University of Salford in Manchester, UK, houses a small but significant collection of drawings, prints, books and materials from Adams’ studio. His Abu Ghraib (2006) is in the collection of the Imperial War Museum in London. In 2012, after a retrospective at the Salford Museum and Art Gallery, a show was organised in partnership with the Salford Working Class Movement Library.

Spanish curator Pep Subirós selected South Africa 1959 for an exhibition entitled Apartheid: The South African Mirror at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona in 2007. Adams was honoured with an exhibition at the Northumbria University in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK in 2015.

In South Africa, small exhibitions at the Irma Stern Museum in 1994 and at the Iziko South African National Gallery in 2003 were followed by a major retrospective in 2008 – Journey on a Tightrope, curated by Marilyn Martin and Joe Dolby. The exhibition travelled to the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2009. Martin and Dolby worked with SMAC Gallery at the Cape Town Art Fair (Albert Adams in Black& White) and SMAC Woodstock (The Bonds of Memory) in 2016, and in 2017 the Rupert Museum in Stellenbosch hosted a retrospective, Albert Adams (1929-2006) – a Fractured History, curated by Martin and Robyn-Leigh Cedras. In 2019 Martin curated Albert Adams – An Invincible Spirit at the Wits Art Museum, in association with SMAC Gallery.