ELLY HOLM, van Berlyn tot Hartbeespoort

399pp., b/w & colour illus., paperback, Imprimatur, Pretoria, 2025

ISBN: 9781037026430

A biography of artist Elly Holm, compiled from her letters and personal recollections and written by her eldest son, Dieter Holm.

Elly Holm was born in 1911 in Berlin, Germany, and lived in South Africa from 1948 until her death in 2000. She studied at the Kunstakademie in Leipzig, where she met her husband, Dr Erik Holm, a South African archaeologist and art historian. They married in South Africa in 1933 and returned to Germany in 1939 where Erik worked for Radio Zeesen, which broadcast pro-German programmes in Afrikaans. After the war he was extradited to South Africa, tried, and sentenced to life imprisonment for treason. In 1946 Elly returned to South Africa with their seven children and after Erik’s release in 1948 the family settled at Hartbeespoort Dam.

Elly Holm held more than 100 solo exhibitions locally and abroad. A versatile artist, her oeuvre encompassed paintings and pen sketches, terracotta statues, bronze statues, graffito reliefs, linocuts, and book illustrations, stained glasswork and slate stone reliefs. She is widely regarded as the pioneer of sgraffito art in South Africa.

Dieter Holm is Professor Emeritus of Architecture at the University of Pretoria.