TREE >>Limited numbered aquatint etching<<

Hilda Bernstein Undated (probaly c.1971) beautiful large aquatint etching, black on hazy blue-green ground of a Pine tree. 86 x 68 cm (frame). Signed and numbered (7 out of 90) in pencil by Bernstein. 51 x 66 cm (etching). Mounted, glazed and framed (original untouched state since the 1970s). Bernstein (1915-2005) studied & practised her art in Camden & Hampstead in London, with numerous showings of her works including at the Royal Academy. In 1994 the Guernica Gallery in Santa Barbara, California held a retrospective exhibition for Bernstein. Her themes were the horrors of the apartheid regime as well as the contrasting beauty of the natural world of the countryside. Bernstein was the only communist to be elected to the Johannesburg City Council & later founded the Transvaal Peace Council (until it was banned) and the Federation of South African Women (first multi-racial women's organisation)- she played a central role organising the historic Women's March to Pretoria in 1956. In 1960 Bernstein was arrested (for the final time) during the State of Emergency following the Sharpeville shootings and was forced to continue her political activism clandestinely & then flee to London. She returned to South Africa in 1994 to participate in the first democratic national election & to see her friend Nelson Mandela be elected the first Black President of South Africa at the head of the ANC. This fabulously moving image by a female political activist & refugee evokes an enduring sense of emancipation, survival and growth.. Signed by Illustrator(s). No Binding. Fine.