Sam Nhlengethwa: Chronicle of a South African Visual Storyteller

Jabulani Sam Nhlengethwa (born 9 January 1955 in Payneville Township, Springs, Gauteng) is one of South Africa’s most influential contemporary artists, celebrated for his intricate collage work, figurative painting, printmaking, and visual narratives grounded in township life, jazz culture, and social identity. His career, stretching back to the mid‑1970s, has forged a visual archive that documents not only the aesthetics of everyday existence in South Africa but also the political and cultural transitions of the late apartheid and post‑1994 era. 

Nhlengethwa’s oeuvre is distinguished by its hybrid technique: he combines cut‑outs from found printed images, magazine clippings, etchings, and photogravure with painterly gestures, overlaying drawing, painting, and photographic fragments into cohesive, layered compositions. This method produces a collage that is at once narrative and associative, a kind of visual memoir shaped by both personal memory and collective experience. 

From a young age, Nhlengethwa was deeply influenced by his township upbringing and his family’s love of jazz elements that recur throughout his work and provide both subject matter and structural rhythm to his art. Growing up in Ratanda, he collected jazz records from age seventeen, forging an enduring connection between musical improvisation and his own compositional style. This connection is evident in works like his celebrated jazz‑themed prints and collages, where visual motifs seem to riff and interact like a bebop ensemble. 

Formative Education and Early Artistic Development

Nhlengethwa’s formal artistic training began at the Rorke’s Drift Art and Craft Centre and continued through studies at the Johannesburg Art Foundation and the Mofolo Art Centre in Soweto. These institutions were critical in shaping his artistic vocabulary at a time when black South African artists faced severe educational restrictions and systemic marginalization. 

During the Thupelo and Triangle workshops, artist‑run programs that brought artists together to experiment and critique, Nhlengethwa encountered abstraction and collaborative practice, influences that would later be visible in his abstract works and his approach to collage as spatial arrangement. The Thupelo workshop, co‑founded by figures such as David Koloane, Bongi Dhlomo, and Bill Ainslie, helped cultivate a generation of black South African modernists. 

In addition to studio practice, Nhlengethwa taught part‑time at the Federative Union of Black Artists (FUBA), contributing to artist education during a politically turbulent period in South Africa. Alongside teaching, he worked for thirteen years as a television technician at the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC). This experience likely honed his understanding of visual media and narrative sequencing. 

Technique and Thematic Concerns

Central to Nhlengethwa’s work is the collage technique, which he developed as both material practice and expressive language. Rather than using collage purely for its visual effects, he treats it as a method of assembling memory, media, and material culture. This approach allows him to juxtapose images from disparate contexts, township scenes, jazz musicians, domestic interiors, fashion, and historical figures to create narratives that foreground everyday humanity and social complexity in South Africa.

His distinctive collages often begin with hard‑edge cut shapes from pre‑existing printed material, which he reframes and integrates into paintings, lithographs, or photogravure prints. By doing this, he not only reclaims visual fragments from magazines and posters but reconfigures them into reflections of lived experience. His collage images, rich in texture and layered symbolismcan be seen as visual analogues to sonic improvisation: disparate elements structured into a rhythmic and meaningful whole.

Jazz music is not merely a referent in his work but a structural sensibility. The rhythmic interplay of shapes and images mirrors the syncopation and call‑and‑response techniques of jazz ensembles. In exhibitions such as Kind of Blue(2010), dedicated to trumpeter Miles Davis, Nhlengethwa explicitly connects musical heritage with collective memory, demonstrating how visual art can channel the spirit of jazz’s improvisational brilliance. 

Exhibitions and Global Recognition

Nhlengethwa’s work has been showcased extensively in South Africa and internationally, attesting to his global resonance. He has exhibited at major venues including the Goodman Gallery (Johannesburg and Cape Town), where retrospectives like Conversations (2012) explored the vibrancy of Johannesburg’s urban life through print, painting, and collage. That show was rooted in collective interaction—scenes of people talking, sharing meals, and moving through the city—underscoring his focus on social spaces as loci of creativity. 

Internationally, his work featured in important exhibitions such as Seven Stories about Modern Art in Africa at the Whitechapel Gallery in London (1995), the Cairo Biennale (2010), and Re(constructions): Contemporary Art from South Africa in Rio de Janeiro (2011). Such participation places him within the broader discourse of global contemporary art and acknowledges his contributions to historical narratives about modernism on the African continent. 

In recent years, his work has continued to draw attention. The 2025 exhibition Urban Entanglements: How Art Reflects Citymaking at the Goodman Gallery brought together Nhlengethwa with peers like David Koloane and Kagiso ‘Pat’ Mautloa, highlighting his ongoing relevance to conversations about cities, social transformation, and artistic representation. 

Institution Building and Artistic Community

Beyond his personal practice, Nhlengethwa co‑founded the Bag Factory Artists’ Studio in Johannesburg in 1991, a crucial institution that provided studio space, resources, and community to black artists during a time when such access was limited. The Bag Factory became a historically significant space in post‑apartheid South African art, fostering dialogue, collaboration, and creative development among artists who might otherwise have been excluded from formal artistic networks.

This institutional legacy reinforces Nhlengethwa’s role not just as an artist but as a cultural facilitator, actively shaping the ecosystem for contemporary art in South Africa. His involvement in artist workshops and community mentorship has ensured that younger generations have models of practice grounded in both technical skill and socio‑cultural engagement. 

Stylistic Evolution and Key Works

Nhlengethwa’s stylistic journey traverses abstraction, figuration, and narrative collage. Early in his career, his engagement with abstraction emerged through studio experiments and workshops, yet he is best known for his figurative and collage works that foreground human interaction, social ecologies, and urban dynamism. 

His oeuvre includes iconic goat lithographs, domestic interior scenes, and street life compositions, each illustrating his commitment to visual stories grounded in everyday life and cultural memory. Auction records confirm the market’s appreciation for his work, with pieces realizing prices ranging from modest sums to as high as $66,202 (approx. ZAR 1.2 million) for works like Glimpses of the Fifties and Sixties in 2019, illustrating both commercial appeal and critical acclaim. 

In series like Tribute to Artists (e.g., tributes to Romare Bearden, Ephraim Ngatane, Jean‑Michel Basquiat), Nhlengethwa reflects on artistic lineage, positioning himself within a global history of visual hybridization while honoring influences that shaped his aesthetic perspective. These works demonstrate his conscious dialogue with art history itself, transforming homage into a creative conversation across geographies and eras. 

Legacy and Contemporary Impact

Sam Nhlengethwa’s legacy is inseparable from the narrative of South African visual culture after apartheid. His ability to capture the complexities of township life, music culture, and urban transformation situates his work at the heart of dialogues about identity, resilience, and collective memory. He remains represented by major institutions like the Goodman Gallery. He is included in public collections across South Africa, including the Johannesburg Art Gallery, the Iziko South African National Gallery, and the Durban Art Gallery. 

Today, his art continues to resonate for its humanistic sensibility, an art that is both profoundly personal and expansively social. His collages are more than images; they are visual archives of lived experience, improvisation, and cultural persistence. Nhlengethwa’s body of work challenges Western art historical norms by foregrounding African urbanity, community narrative, and media hybridity, marking him as a pivotal figure not only within South African art but within global contemporary practice.