Marc Pradervand Artist

Marc Pradervand was born in East London in 1970 and grew up in the Eastern Cape. He has lived in various parts of South Africa and briefly in the U.K. Presently he lives and works in the rural hamlet of Riebeeck East, near Grahamstown.

Marc is a photographer and painter who holds a Higher Diploma in Education and a National Diploma in Photography from Nelson Mandela University and has, to date, held 12 solo exhibitions and taken part in numerous group shows, both locally and internationally.

From disturbing and sinister to childlike and playful, the diverse range of moods and subject matter in Marc’s work are always energetically stated in strong colours. Emerging from his recent work is a meditation on nature and the iconography of first cultures.

Some of Marc’s work forms part of the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum’s permanent collection.

Pradervand is ruder than BRETT MURRAY and much funnier too.  Don’t miss this exhibition!”

Marc Pradevand has an amazing ability to shock and offend. In our mollycoddled society we need more people like him. His current body of work is another vibrant assault on complacent convention. More power to his arm

I have seen nothing in South African painting quite like the works of the reclusive art-savage Marc Pradervand. They are uniquely South African, often inspired by unsettling South African occurrences of the sort that that most visual artists shy away from. They are not so much a breath of fresh air as a blast of cold, brutal reality.

Pradervand wields a paintbrush with the cutting determination of a poacher wielding an AK-47. His work confronts, challenges and disturbs in equal measure.

Pradervands crude, atavistic, psychsexual painting has all the vicious porno angst of Bitterkomix. Experiencing his exhibition is like taking a trip to Walter Battiss’ mythical Fook Island only to find its friendly inhabitants have been warped by a stoned Aboriginal shaman into a tortured bestiary. The ragged malevolence of his Zuma portrait is a more astute assault on “Number One” than Brett Murray’s notorious “The Spear.”