Title: “Karoo-dorp: Winteraand”, by Andries Bezuidenhout, oil on canvas, 40.5×40.5cm.
Andries delivered the annual N.P. van Wyk Louw memorial lecture at the University of Johannesburg on 6 September 2018. Along with the lecture, this painting was presented as a gift to the University of Johannesburg. Van Wyk Louw was an Afrikaans-language poet and public intellectual. The title of the lecture was “Utopiese verbeelding en Afrikaans: ʼn Gesprek met T. Dunbar Moodie en N.P. van Wyk Louw” [Utopian Imagination and Afrikaans: A Conversation with T. Dunbar Moodie and N.P. van Wyk Louw]. Dunbar Moodie is one of the most insightful authors on the history of Afrikaner nationalism. The lecture was dedicated to the painter Walter Meyer, who was murdered at the end of 2017. Meyer’s grandfather, Judge Rumpff, who presided over the Treason Trial (1956-1961), is mentioned in the lecture, as well as Rick Turner, a South African philosopher and activist who was assassinated in 1977. The lecture (in Afrikaans) can be downloaded here. The painting depicts the house in Sutherland where Van Wyk Louw grew up.