Alexis Preller

Biography

Alexis Preller was a Pretoria-born South African modernist painter who blended European and African motifs. He trained at London's Westminster School of Art and studied ancient and African art in Europe. Preller is celebrated for his highly individualistic style, drawing on Egyptian, Greek, Renaissance and traditional southern African art. In the late 1940s and 1950s he painted scenes inspired by visits to Ndebele villages and his trademark “Mapogga” women murals. Over time his work became more abstract and cosmic, reflecting mid-century space-age imagery. Preller's vivid, mythic paintings (e.g. Garden of Eden, Basuto Allegory) helped define postwar South African art.