Leonard Matsotso (b. 1949, Pimville, Soweto, South Africa). is a pivotal South African post-war and contemporary artist whose work engages with myth, memory, and transformation. From an early age, he trained at the Jubilee Art Centre under the mentorship of key figures in South African art, later furthering his studies at the Bill Ainslie Studios and travelling to Europe to broaden his artistic horizons.

Matsotso’s early work is characterised by striking black-and-white conte drawings, in which hybrid figures emerge from dense, cross-hatched fields, evoking myth, psychological tension, and cultural memory. As his practice matured, he expanded into colour and scale, producing monumental works that explore African myth, heroic archetypes, and post-colonial identity with formal precision and boldness.

His work has been featured in solo exhibitions including New Horizons with Thomas Kgnope, which toured Canada (1975), as well as numerous exhibitions across South Africa and internationally, and continues to be celebrated for its formal inventiveness and cultural depth. Matsotso’s work has also appeared in group exhibitions and projects such as Artists Protest Detention without Trial at Market Gallery, Johannesburg (1988), Panoramas of Passage: Changing Landscapes of South Africa in Connecticut (1995), Fault Lines: Enquiries into Truth and Reconciliation at Cape Town Castle (1996), We Love Mandela at South Africa House, London (2013), THIS PLACE – THIS SPACE at Moor Gallery, Cape Town (2016), Shifting Conversations at University of Johannesburg (2017), and When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting at Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town (2022–23).

Matsotso has also participated in prominent art fairs including 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, London (2019), Investec Cape Town Art Fair (2020, 2022, 2024), and FNB Art Joburg Fair (2019, 2020, 2024). His work is represented in major collections including the Constitutional Court Art Collection, De Beers Centenary Art Gallery, Johannesburg Art Gallery, RMB Art Collection, Museum Afrika, Iziko South African National Gallery, Standard Bank Collection, and Wits Art Museum.

Matsotso’s layered visual language demonstrates a deep concern with how African cultural heritage, mythic figures, and symbolic memory interface with contemporary lived experience. His hybrid forms, often sculptural in their abstraction, and his use of colour and geometry extend the psychological and spatial presence of his subjects, creating works that are both narrative and architectural in their impact. Leonard Matsotso continues to engage in a powerful visual dialogue, one that bridges the mythic and the modern, the individual and the collective, offering a sustained and evolving contribution to South African art.