Red, yellow and blue, just for you, 2021

Henni Niemann Jnr is one of South Africa’s most successful contemporary painters. Receiving his first artistic influences from his father and the iconic South African painter Gregoire Boonzaier, the artist has grown to develop a unique style forged in the experimentation with the Fauvist and Cubist aesthetic. Henni portrays the vibrant wildlife and indigenous culture of the land that has nurtured him, placing energy, color, rhythm and movement at the heart of its compositions. Instinct drives him, turning his oil paintings into manifestations of shared memories and emotions, with bold brushstrokes and a rich impasto technique. At the sound of colorful beats, Henni’s figures dance in harmony.

Elysium, one of his most recent oil creations, constitutes a sublime example of the artist’s late gravitation towards a more abstract body of work featuring geometric and hard-angled forms. Henni’s earthy and mellow nymphs bathe insouciant in the natural course of a river, surrounded by leafy wilderness. The artist’s mastery of the oil canvas medium captures the cocooning and captivating motion that emanates from this scene. With African Contemporary Art on the rise, being promoted and showcased in groundbreaking art fairs such as 1-54, Henni is an artist to keep an eye on.