As an award-winning artist of international merit, Zimbabwean-born artist Andre van Zijl’s work has historically reflected socio-political and global culture translated through a multi-disciplinary universal integrative lens. In his ancestral homeland, South Africa, van Zijl was harassed by the state police, who visited each of his biannual one-person exhibitions to see if they could arrest him for a law banning negative representation of any South African president, living or dead. The police disbanded a “freedom” choir he was collaborating with, arrested, beat, jailed, and exiled an Xhosa artist partnering with him. This deeply motivated him to give voice to those without a voice. 

He says: “Art is a creative sword for peace & equity.” His work from this era challenged the institutionalized inequities between the privileged few and the exploited disempowered masses, structured as apartheid – “apart-hate.” This included other forms of oppression that deny challenging art, cross-cultural communication, and social and political equity.

After being published in “Resistance Art, South Africa” by Sue Williamson, he was invited to speak to a gathering of dissident poets, writers, and political activists on resistance art. His first words had him thrown off the stage. He said, “The most effective resistance is to live the opposite of what you are resisting.”

Andre’s art, instrumental as a voice of progressive change in this tumultuous period, is represented in many important international museums and public and private collections, including the “South African National Gallery”, with numerous publications worldwide. He was published in the 4-volume series – “100 Years of South African Art “ – by Wits University for the South African National Gallery in 2012, and most recently in “South Africa, The Art of a Nation” – The British Museum, 2016.

“The evolution of my work continues to emphasize artistic and spiritual unity through all expressions of life. My body of work explores the systems of thinking, which both separate us from each other and unite us to each other in an inextricably interdependent unitive reality.” Unity in diversity.

He is also an art instructor, taking students “to their next level.” He has taught at all levels, both privately and in groups, including graduate-level students at university, college, middle and high school.

He is co-founder and director of All Paths Divinity School, a board member of the SoCal Parliament of World Religions, and an elder of the Mankind Project.

Andre van Zijl, an artist, sculptor, teacher, philosopher, poet, author, and mystic cosmic citizen, lives in Los Angeles with his wife Debrah and states that their two adult children, Jarryd and Sarina, “are our best artworks.”