Alice Goldin

Alice Goldin was an Austrian-born South African artist, known for her woodblock and screenprints, as well as her serene landscape paintings. Born in Vienna, Austria, Goldin fled with her family to England at the age of 16, just days after the Nazi occupation of Austria. During World War II, she served as a nurse, an experience that deepened her sensitivity to beauty, memory, and resilience, themes that would later inform her art.

In 1948, a visit to South Africa turned into a lifelong stay after she met and married her husband. Two years later, she enrolled at the Pretoria Technical College to formally study art, later continuing her education in Rome, London, and Cape Town. Over a career spanning more than 60 years, Goldin developed a distinctive artistic voice rooted in a reverence for nature and an intuitive sense of harmony.

Goldin’s signature woodcut prints, some of the earliest and most refined in South African printmaking, reflect her fascination with trees, light, and negative space. Her works often featured stark yet poetic depictions of pine trees along Rhodes Drive or scenes from Aniston, places she once called home. Using the natural grain of the woodblocks themselves, Goldin allowed her materials to guide the creative process, resulting in prints rich with atmosphere and organic texture.

A pioneer of South African printmaking, Alice Goldin has left a lasting legacy. Her work celebrates life’s quiet beauty and the patterns of nature. As she once said, “I never know what’s going to happen until I get there” is a testament to her instinctive approach to making art.

Sources:

https://www.straussart.co.za/a...

https://www.alicegoldin.com/ab...

https://arttimes.co.za/alice-g...