The Hugo Naude Art Centre

The Art of Seeing: My Worcester Genesis at the Hugo Naudé Art Centre

In the early 1960s, Worcester was a town that felt perfectly balanced—what I have often called a ‘Goldilocks’ town. It was not so large that one felt lost, yet it was not so small that the rest of the world felt out of reach. As the heart of the Cape fruit industry, it was a place defined by wide streets, picturesque mountain backdrops, and a staunchly conservative social fabric. For me, as a teenager attending Worcester Boys High, the true world did not exist on the rugby fields or within the sterile confines of the science labs. Instead, it resided at 115 Russell Street, inside the thick, neo-Classical walls of the Hugo Naudé Art Centre.

My journey to that sanctuary was something of an anomaly. In Standard Six, I had been dutifully studying Latin, but by the time I reached Standard Seven, the school system demanded a definitive choice. We were required to select one of four subjects: Latin, Bookkeeping, Woodwork, or Art. To the rest of my class, the paths were clearly demarcated. If you aspired to a professional career, you stuck with Latin; if you were destined for business, you took Bookkeeping; and if you were considered "handy," you opted for Woodwork. I was the only boy in my entire year to choose Art.

This decision meant that twice a week, from two o’clock in the afternoon until five, I would physically and metaphorically leave the world of Boys High behind. I would walk away from the rigid expectations of the school and enter a different reality. For those three hours, I was the solitary male student in a room filled with girls, the likes of Margaret Siddle, Connie Cruikshank, Verona Higgs and Hanlie van Huysteen. To a teenage boy in a conservative enclave, this was both a daunting and somewhat miraculous arrangement, yet any self-consciousness I felt evaporated the moment I crossed the threshold of that building.

The Hugo Naudé Art Centre was a place of profound sensory magic. It had once been the home and studio of Hugo Naudé himself, South Africa’s first true impressionist, and the structure seemed to exhale history. With its elegant external stairways and a pedimented front gable, it felt more like a secular sanctuary than a school. As soon as you walked through the door, the smells enveloped you—the earthy, cool scent of wet clay, the sharp tang of gluey papier-mâché, and the heavy, dusty aroma emanating from large jars of well-used paintbrushes. It was a "gracious" place, as June Dollman Crous once described it, existing light-years away from the rows of wooden desks and the rote learning that defined our academic lives.

From Standard Seven through Standard Eight, my guide in this world was Hannes Koorzen. Hannes was a colleague of Bokkie Basson, and together they formed a sort of modernistic vanguard in Worcester. At the time, the town was deeply traditional, and "Modern Art" was often viewed with a suspicious, if not outright hostile, eye. Hannes was a staunch defender of aesthetics, a mentor who helped us understand that art was not merely about producing a pretty picture; it was about a serious, disciplined engagement with the world. Under his tutelage, we began to move past the superficial. We were not just drawing; we were learning the foundational mechanics of composition, drawing and silk-screen.

However, the true transformation began when I reached Standard Nine and came under the wing of the principal, Albertus Johannes "Bokkie" Basson. Bokkie was a man who lived and breathed art with an almost religious intensity. He had studied under Maurice van Essche at the Continental School of Fine Arts in Cape Town and had spent formative time in London at the Central School for Arts and Crafts, learning from luminaries such as Cecil Collins and Merlyn Evans. He brought that European, avant-garde energy back to the Breede River Valley, and he possessed very little patience for those he labeled "philistines"—people who viewed art as a mere hobby or an easy grade.

Bokkie’s philosophy was simple but devastatingly difficult to master: he wanted to teach us how to see. He would frequently tell us that most people go through life just looking at things, but an artist has to truly see them. Seeing, to Bokkie, was an act of excavation. One had to strip away the decorative surface to find the structural integrity, the anatomical truth, and the emotional landscape hidden underneath. He was never dogmatic and rarely stood over a shoulder to dictate where a line should fall. Instead, he would circulate through the studio, observing our work with keen, intelligent eyes before offering a suggestion that would completely shift our perspective. He encouraged us to experiment with everything from gouache and charcoal to lino cuts and collage. I vividly remember the powder paints and the thick brushes as he pushed us to find the essence of our subjects.

His classes were small and intimate, which was a fortunate environment for the lone boy in the room. We would spend those long afternoon sessions working as the light shifted across the studio floor. Bokkie did more than teach technique; he provided a window into a wider world. In an era where there were no formal art history textbooks in schools, we took diligent manual notes as he spoke of the rising stars of the global art scene, such as Robert Rauschenberg and Roy Lichtenstein. These were names that certainly did not appear in the standard South African curriculum of the 1960s. He made us feel like fellow travelers in a global contemporary conversation, despite our location in a small town in the Western Cape.

Bokkie himself was an abstract expressionist, a fact that invited no small amount of derision from the "local wags" of Worcester. His paintings were bold, textured works with titles like Hexrivierloop or Wingerd Struktuur. He used vivid reds and steely blues, applying the paint in thick, impasto strokes. The public, who craved recognizable landscapes and realistic fruit bowls, were baffled. They mocked his work, calling them his "Breede River pebble paintings" because of the interlocking globular shapes. People often joked that the only way to tell which way was "up" on a Bokkie Basson painting was by checking the location of his signature.

As his students, we were fiercely defensive. We would attend his exhibitions at the Santam Bank space or the local library and attempt to explain the structural basis of his work to the skeptics. We saw what they could not—that his abstract works were deeply rooted in the emotional landscape of the region. He would often drive out into the countryside, park his car on a dirt road near farmworkers' cottages, and sketch with his pad resting on the steering wheel. He was capturing the soul of the place, not just its skin.

Yet, it was not all serious aesthetic debate. Bokkie believed in the "Art of Living." He was an intuitive gardener who loved indigenous flowers like nerines and babianas, and he was a man who appreciated the finer nuances of life. One of my fondest memories is of our matric class banquet. Bokkie had a soft spot for our group because we were genuinely serious about our craft. He invited us to his home in Faery Glen for a feast designed to both delight and challenge us. I remember fried sheep’s brains being on the menu—a culinary adventure that felt like another lesson in opening our minds to new possibilities.

When Bokkie passed away in 2000, it felt like the closing of a significant era. However, when his daughter Marinelle organized an exhibition of his work at the Hugo Naudé Museum shortly after, I had the distinct privilege of opening it. Standing in that building again, surrounded by his drawings and paintings, I realized the immense depth of my debt to him. I thought back to that Standard Seven boy, the only one in his class to choose Art, cycling past the "Union Vinegar factory" and the Handy Printing Works toward Russell Street. I did not know then that I was walking toward my future. I did not know that Bokkie Basson would give me the eyes to see a world that most people merely look at.

Today, every time I set up a canvas to capture the light on a corner café or the specific shadow falling on a general dealer’s wall, I am utilizing the tools he provided. He did not just teach us how to draw; he taught us how to live with a curious, adventurous spirit. He was the rebel mentor of Worcester, and I remain immensely proud to have been his student. To anyone who remembers those golden afternoons at the Hugo Naudé Art Centre, remember Bokkie. Remember the man who sat in his car on a dusty road, sketching the emotional landscape of the Cape. He taught us that art is a serious, noble pursuit, and for that, I will always be grateful.