Ernie Zobole Exhibition

The Western Mail has an excellent feature today on the exhibition by the Rhondda artist Ernie Zobole, curated by Ceri Thomas, which is now at the Glynn Vivian gallery in Swansea. I saw the exhibition when it opened in Newport last September.

Rhondda-born historian Professor Dai Smith had this to say about Zobole's relevance in an article in the Western Mail last year:

THE life of Rhondda artist Ernest Zobole sums up the best and the worst of the South Wales Valleys, according to historian Dai Smith.

Zobole, of Italian extraction, spent 50 years until his death in 1999 painting the quirky landscapes and uniquely contoured streets of home.

His career embodied the intellectual assurance and the cultural achievements of the community that nurtured him. His art was the product of its self-confident pursuit of knowledge and the rewards of the imagination.

Zobole's paintings, vibrant with colour, reproduce the simple images of his life in Rhondda. They reflect, for example, the world as seen from his modest front door or the window of his studio. They turn the simple contents of his home - a table, a few chairs, a teapot standing on kitchen worktop - into objects of beauty.

You can find the catalogue of the exhibition on-line here. A further online collection of paintings by Zobole is here.