David Koloane (b.1938), South Africa’s senior Expressionist painter, has since the 1950s confronted the urban world in figural renderings and bold colours to develop a powerful mode of social criticism. Koloane’s central subject, black life in the city of Johannesburg, is depicted in swirling, swaying, and exaggeratedly executed brushstrokes. These techniques are meant to convey the emotional state of the artist reacting to the anxieties and yearnings of life in Africa’s mega-cities. The hustlers no doubt refers to the groups of men, ubiquitous in Johannesburg city, who use the traffic lights as a place to trade anything from cheap Chinese goods to offers of African herbal remedies to overcome male impotence.
