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The artist in the garden : the quest for Moses Tladi / Angela Read Lloyd
Like Monet, who was his first inspiration, Moses Tladi was a gardener and an artist. Born in remote Sekhukhuneland, east of Pretoria, South Africa, the son of a medicine man who made a living by working in iron, and a mother who was a gifted potter. In his early childhood, Tladi herded cattle in the dramatic hill-country around his home.
It is not known how he encountered Herbert Read, but in the mid 1920s he found employment in Johannesburg as gardener to Read at his property in the fashionable suburb of Parktown. Read introduced Tladi to the collector and philanthropist Howard Pim, and together they promoted Tladi at public exhibitions from 1929 onwards.
The quest for Moses Tladi is a poignant and personal story relating to a wider world of art, family, home, love and loss against a background of the dramatic events that have encompassed all of us since the dawn of the new South Africa.
Source : The artist in the garden : the quest for Moses Tladi, 2009, Print Matters, Noordhoek, South Africa
