South African painter Irma Stern is known around the world for her pioneering, modernist depictions of 20th-century African life. In 1922, solo exhibition of her work in Cape Town signaled the arrival of avant-garde painting in South Africa; further exhibitions across Western Europe thrust Stern into the international spotlight. Born in South Africa of Jewish-German parents, Stern and her family relocated to Germany in the early 1900s where she began her formal artistic training and was encouraged by the painter Max Pechstein. Upon returning to South Africa in the 1920s, Stern went in search of the Africa of her childhood memories, travelling extensively throughout Africa for the rest of her life and painting expressionist portraits of the indigenous people she encountered. Though she received international acclaim during her lifetime, she was all but forgotten outside of South Africa for decades after her death in 1966.
