23/06/2024
Strauss-Kahn & co
ARTIST FOCUS | Trudi Dicks
We share our heartfelt condolences for the passing of Trudi Dicks. Dicks, a South African-Namibian artist and printmaker was known primarily for her impressive oeuvre of linocuts, woodcuts, and metal etchings. She was born in 1940 in Graaff-Reinet, South Africa and later moved to Namibia in 1964, where she continued to reside. In March 1965, she left for England to embark on a two-year journey of working and travelling, after which she returned to Namibia, married a Namibian, and settled in Windhoek.
With each exhibition, her creative processes evolved in line with her interests at the time. Dicks developed her own methods of cutting and etching linoleum, carving wood, and producing collographs, always aiming for the best results possible. Factors such as familiarity and trust became her guide. Her first exhibitions featured massive black-and-white linoleum prints, her subject matter trending towards politics and male and female relationships. At a later stage, her prints and drawings were supplemented with sculptural clay, wood, plastic, resin, and stone forms, as well as needlework, including crochet work and embroidery. Themes often portrayed with a playful attitude included the environment, especially fauna and flora. These combinations resulted in an unusually eclectic variety of prints and sculptural forms. The vivid intensity of her art may be linked to her integrity and commitment to her subject matter and her intense engagement with the visual realm, as she was born with a hearing impairment.
Dicks’s work is represented in corporate and private collections throughout Namibia, South Africa, America and Europe. She signed her work GSM Dicks which is an abbreviation of her full name: Gertruida Sophia Maria Dicks.
Trudi Dicks
(South African/Namibian 1940- 2024)
Cotyledon
signed, dated 2011, numbered 3/4 and inscribed with the title in pencil in the margin
colour linocut on paper
