Jean Doyle - 1943

African Dreamtime

About the Artist

Jean Doyle is ranked amongst the most famous South African sculptors. She started her art career as a painter and then discovered sculpture to be a more expressive art form. Jean has sculpted for over thirty years and started her own foundry, one of the first of its kind in Cape Town. Jean's husband Michael, has a natural affinity for working with metal and has the technical insights required to cast world-class sculptures.
 

Style & Format

Jean’s internationally-recognised trademark of the fuller female-figure offers interesting social critiques. This South African sculptor integrates images of Africa with the influence of European culture. Her realism cloaks universal truths and hides a sometimes revolutionary spirit in her South African sculptures.

"Her work is an investigation into the character of woman. The woman is presented as bold, capable and confident. Her body is as bounteous as her beauty. She exudes resilience, strength and warmth."
Zanele Mbeki - ex-First Lady, South Africa
 

Commissions

Jean has won international commissions which include the famous Just Nuisance statue in Simons Town, two diamond miners for Diamonds South Africa (Pty) Ltd; and Kifangondo, Angola's National Monument to national freedom. Kifangondo is Jean Dolyle’s most celebrated work as a South African sculptor - one of the largest artworks on the African continent, it weighs just under 8 tonnes, stands 9 metres high and took just under a year to complete.

"Jean Doyle's work is renowned all over the world and her veneration of the fuller female figure has become a trademark of her work as well as a tool for social commentary."
Zanele Mbeki - ex-First Lady, South Africa

Call Fine Art Portfolio now on +27 (0)21 433 0908 or email info@fineartportfolio.co.za to commission South African sculpture by Jean Doyle.