Pictorial & machine age · 1962–1982 · Sub-Saharan Africa

Rorke's Drift Linocut

Also known as Rorke's Drift Printmaking, ELC Art and Craft Centre prints, Evangelical Lutheran Church Art and Craft Centre prints

The prints of the Lutheran art centre that Swedish teachers Peder and Ulla Gowenius started at Ceza Hospital in 1962 and moved to Rorke's Drift in 1963: under apartheid, which denied Black South Africans formal fine-art education, the chief training ground for many Black artists. Azaria Mbatha, John Muafangejo, Charles Nkosi and others cut black-and-white linocuts of Bible stories, Zulu and Kwanyama history and daily life, often crowded into horizontal bands with every gap filled by figures, foliage and pattern. Muafangejo added titles, dedications and commentary in the print itself.

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A black-and-cream, woodcut-style poster headed “GOOD WATER” shows four stacked scenes of villagers carrying water, working around wells, drinking, and tending crops beside round thatched houses. Decorative borders contain leaves, flowers, birds, fish, and wave patterns. — AI-generated by Stylogeny from the style’s design choices. Not a real or historical work.

Use it with care

These prints are the work of named Black South African and Namibian artists, many still in copyright with the artists or their estates, made under apartheid at a Lutheran mission centre. Rankin and Hobbs call the 'typical' Rorke's Drift print a construct that the market pushed artists to comply with; the centre also made etchings, aquatints, colour relief prints and screenprints, so treat this banded black-and-white linocut as one face of a diverse school, not the whole of it. Borrow the system (hand-cut black-and-white relief, banded narrative, words in the block), not a particular print, a named artist's figures or Muafangejo's lettering hand. Do not label generated work 'naive' or 'tribal' African art: when Clement Greenberg judged Art South Africa Today in 1975, Rorke's Drift artists were displayed in a 'catch all' section for representational and 'naive' works. Do not invent Zulu or Kwanyama ritual, Christian scenes or struggle martyrs as decoration: picture the subject the brief supplies in its own community's terms. Never add an artist's signature, edition number or a Rorke's Drift or ELC inscription to generated work, and never present a generated image as a Rorke's Drift print.

How it works

Cut the block in linoleum or wood and print it by hand in black on white paper, so the gouged white line does the drawing and tone comes from runs of fine cuts, not shading.
Divide the sheet into horizontal bands or zones and read them like a strip; split each band into scenes of one story with trees or gesturing figures.
Fill every gap: crowd figures, animals, foliage and pattern into a shallow, flat space with no perspective and no empty ground.
Set the story here and now, among the faces, homes and landscape of its own community, so that even a Bible story happens locally, as these artists set theirs in Zulu and Kwanyama history and daily life.
Where the story needs it, cut words into the block with the picture: a title, a dedication or a short line in hand-cut English letters that explains or comments on the scene.
Build the image from stark contrasts of dark and light: dark, strongly outlined figure groups carry the action against lighter runs of foliage and pattern, or figures stand as flat black silhouettes.

Evangelical Lutheran Church Art and Craft Centre, set up for the Church of Sweden Mission by the Konstfack-trained teachers Peder and Ulla Gowenius: linocut began with patients at Ceza Mission Hospital, Zululand, early in 1962; the centre opened at Umpumulo (Mapumulo) later in 1962 and moved to the Oscarsberg mission station at Rorke's Drift, Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal), in 1963; a Certificate in Fine Art followed in 1968 and the fine art section closed in 1982

Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition: Framed panels characteristic
All-over field characteristic
Central symmetry occasional
Space & hierarchy: Horror vacui defining
Sequential narrative defining
Flat hierarchy characteristic
Repetition & rhythm occasional
Layered information occasional
Typography: Hand-lettering characteristic
All caps occasional
Colour: Monochrome defining
Light ground characteristic
Flat fields occasional
Limited spot colours occasional
Form & shape: Stylised figuration defining
Biomorphic curves occasional
Distortion & exaggeration occasional
Surface & texture: Carved line defining
Paper & letterpress bite occasional
Ornament: Abundant decoration characteristic
Folk & sacred symbols characteristic
Borders & frames characteristic
Floral & vegetal occasional
Imagery: Line illustration defining
Pattern & repeat occasional
Comic & cartoon occasional
Diagram & data occasional
Medium & production: Woodblock & linocut defining
Tone & intent: Spiritual & sacred defining
Communal & popular occasional
Warm & approachable occasional
Agitational & persuasive occasional
Avoids: Naturalistic depiction, Illusion of depth, Generous white space, Gradients, Full polychrome, Straight photography, Gloss & highlights, Ironic & self-aware

Palette

#151210
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Typefaces

Hand-cut title in the block
John Muafangejo inscribed titles in the block with the picture, e.g. Angola and South West Africa, 1976
Hand-cut captions and slogans
Muafangejo's explanatory texts, dedications and English slogans such as 'Unite is Strengeth'

Known for

Muziweyixhwala (Muzi) Tabete, untitled linocut of a sacred spring guarded by a lion and four elephants (Ceza, 1962; Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge), unsigned and often inscribed by Peder Gowenius
Azaria Mbatha, Potter's Workshop (linocut, 1962; Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge), in his early silhouette style
Azaria Mbatha, The Revelation of St John (linocut, 1965, 376 x 680 mm; Iziko South African National Gallery)
horizontal bands each split in three by trees and figures, prize for printmaking at Art South Africa Today 1965
John Muafangejo, Untitled ('Rorke's Drift School') (woodcut, 1969; Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge), a large pictorial map of the centre's studios
John Muafangejo, Israel, Jews, Christians, Heathen – Our God for All People (linocut, 1981; Methodist Modern Art Collection)
two Christs, each half black and half white, stacked one above the other with a range of faces between them
Charles Nkosi, Pain on the Cross II (linocut, 1976; Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge), from the Crucifixion linocuts he made as a student at Rorke's Drift (1974–1976)
Black/South Africa/Contemporary Graphics and Tapestries (Rorke's Drift Graphics), Brooklyn Museum, 25 March – 16 May 1976
Philippa Hobbs and Elizabeth Rankin, Rorke's Drift
Empowering Prints (Double Storey, 2003) and its touring exhibition (2003–2005)

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