Diek Grobler

Diek Grobler (1964-) is a versatile South African painter, sculptor, graphic-, performance- and animation artist.

Biography

Born in 1964, he holds a BA Fine Arts degree from the University of Pretoria (1987), a Masters Degree in Fine Arts from the University of the Witwatersrand (1996) and a PhD at the University of South Africa in 2021 (with a thesis on Narrative strategies in animated poetry).

He works in a variety of media and disciplines: ceramic sculpture, oil, and gouache paintings, scraperboard drawings, performance art, computer aided 2D animation and stop-motion animation. He has exhibited professionally since 1988 and his work is included in several major public and corporate collections.

As a graphic artist his projects have included a bi-monthly comic strip for Boeke-Rapport, (the literary supplement to the Sunday paper Rapport), a monthly comic strip for the journal Vrouekeur (Women's Choice") and more than 40 children's books.

Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance

Besides his sculpting and painting, Grobler is involved in avant garde performance art, having set up his own company, Fopspeen Live Art (i.e. "Pacifier Live Art"), working under the name Fopspeen Moving Pictures in 2004 [1].

His live productions include Ararat (staged as part of the main festival program at the KKNK in 2000},

Among the animated films he has created, produced and/or directed with his company are the Filmverse project, the film Die Laaste Woord.

For a full listing of his performance and animation work, see his websites at:

http://diekgrobler.co.za/ and http://www.fopspeen.co.za/.