Dirk Meerkotter

Dirk Meerkotter was born in Pietersburg  on 9 February 1922. Before Dirk Meerkotter was thirty, he had his first solo exhibition at the Constantia Gallery in Johannesburg in 1950. Fellow artists immediately recognised his extraordinary talents, art critics, and the exhibition became the first of eighty-seven solo exhibitions of which the latest, highly successful two, were held in Pretoria in 2005 and Stellenbosch in 2009. Since the early fifties Meerkotter enthusiastically engaged his fellow artists in discussions about modern and contemporary art movements such as post-impressionism, cubism, expressionism, futurism, surrealism and abstract expressionism . In 1992, Dirk Meerkotter received a prestigious award from the Federation of Afrikaans Cultural Organisations. In addition, in 2001, he was awarded an honorary medal from the South African Association for Science and Art for his extraordinary contribution to the visual arts. A ceramic panel made for the Drama Theatre of the State Theatre in Pretoria in 1979.  The theme of the panel comprises interlocking figures on a stage. The deeply carved work on self-made tiles, and entitled The Stage, are sixteen metres wide with a height of three and a half metres. There were several other ceramic commissions of importance including one for the Sand Du Plessis Theatre in Bloemfontein (1985) and another for the University of Potchefstroom (1969-1970).