Judith Mason

Mason was born Judith Seelander Menge in Pretoria in 1938 and graduated from Pretoria High School for Girls in 1956. She received her BA in Fine Art from the University of Witwatersrand in 1960. Mason worked in a variety of creative mediums, including printmaking, drawing, mixed media, and oil painting. She drew inspiration from issues such as politics, history, poetry, and mythology, imbuing them with powerful symbolic imagery. She married Professor Revil John Mason, the former head of the archaeology department at the University of the Witwatersrand, and took the name Judith Mason. They had two children: Tamar Mason (1966) and Petra Mason (1970).

Mason held her first solo show at Gallery 101 in Johannesburg in 1964. She also represented South Africa at the Venice Biennale in 1966, followed by the Sao Paulo Biennial in Brazil in 1971, the Houston Art Festival in 1980, and Art Basel in Miami in 2009. For more than 10 years, during the 1970s and 1980s, Mason was represented by the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg. She has exhibited frequently in South Africa in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Pretoria, Stellenbosch, and George at various galleries such as the Goodman Gallery, Chelsea Gallery, Association of Arts Pretoria, Association of Arts Cape Town, Hout Street Gallery, Strydom Gallery, Dorp Street Gallery, Art on Paper, and Karen Mackerron Gallery. She has held exhibitions abroad in Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Belgium, Chile, West Germany, Switzerland, and the USA. Mason has taught art at the University of the Witwatersrand, the University of Pretoria, the University of Cape Town’s Michaelis School of Fine Art, and the Istituto Lorenzo de’ Medici in Florence, Italy. During this time, her work became part of the National South African School and University curriculum.

Her works are held in local and international collections such as the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town, the Constitutional Court Art Collection in Johannesburg, the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, DC, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Public commissions include tapestries in collaboration with Margaret Stephens and stained-glass window designs for the Great Park Synagogue in Johannesburg.

Mason passed in 2016 in White River, Mpumalanga.

Sources:

https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/south-african-artist-judith-mason/3874 [Accessed 16 August 2024]

https://www.straussart.co.za/artists/judith-mason [Accessed 16 August 2024]

https://www.art.co.za/judithmason/about.php [Accessed 16 August 2024]

https://sahistory.org.za/people/judith-mason [Accessed 16 August 2024]