Ezrom Kgobokanyo Sebata Legae was born on 1 June 1938 in
Vrededorp,
Johannesburg. He was educated at St Cyprian's Primary School in
Sophiatown, then at Madibane High School in Diepkloof, Soweto. When
Sydney Kumalo retired from his teaching post at the Jubilee Art Centre in 1964, Ezrom Legae replaced him first as an assistant and then as a co-director of the Centre. From 1965 to 1972, Legae was represented by the influential Johannesburg gallerist
Egon Guenther and from 1973 until his death by the
Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg. Over his lifetime Legae produced 55 sculptures:30 while represented by the
Egon Guenther Gallery and 25 while represented by the Goodman Gallery; all these sculptures were cast in bronze by the Renzo Vignali foundry in Pretoria. In 1970 he received a
scholarship that allowed him to travel to
Europe and the
United States; between 1972 and 1974 he was director of the African Music and Drama Association Art Project (AMDA) at
Dorkay House, Johannesburg, and from 1980 - 1981 he worked as an instructor at the Federated Union of Black Artists (FUBA), Johannesburg. Dorkay House is inextricably linked with the music of the black South African artists of the 1950s. Legae is particularly well known for his later drawings: The Chicken Series (1977 - 1978) which was consolidated to became the Freedom is Dead - Series 1 (1979) for which Legae received an honourable mention at the Fifth Valparaiso Biennale in Chile in 1979. In 1985, the Goodman Gallery arranged a series of exhibitions in the USA as a revival of the Amadlozi Group formed by
Egon Guenther in 1963, but in name only; the Group retained three of the original members, Kumalo, Skotnes and Villa, with Legae added as a new member. Legae worked full-time as an artist; he lived in
Soweto with his family until his death. Legae is best known for his powerful visual commentaries on the pathos and degradation of apartheid - a critique he extended to the persistence of poverty and racism in the post-apartheid years. He excelled as painter and sculptor of figures, heads and animals working with oil, conté, bronze, clay and mixed media. == Awards and accolades ==