About Kobeli, Eli

Born in 1932, Kroonstad, South Africa. Died in 1999. Kobeli lived in Kroonstad, the town of his birth, as well as Alexandra and Soweto in Johannesburg. He has been referred to by some as the ‘Chagall of Soweto’, and the works on this site seem to justify this tag in some ways. Like Chagall, he experimented with freely-arranged areas of abstraction which incorporate figurative elements which vary in scale. There is furthermore no sense of perspective or gravity in these works which seem reminiscent of this artist’s playful spirit. Children playing in an urban landscape is a similar exercise in using abstraction as a basis for a representational image. Interesting to note here is the fact that Kobeli shared a mentor with Ephraim Ngatane in the Rev. Hall Duncan. He exhibited in various South African galleries, UK, USA and Botswana.

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