Anton Momberg

Momberg was born in 1951, in Pietersburg, Northern Transvaal. He is a sculptor of portraits and figures, working in bronze, wood, ceramics and polyester resin. Anton Momberg has emerged as arguably South Africa’s finest realist in sculpture, focusing mainly on the female nude. His finely crafted work cast in marble dust and resin has an unearthly, unsettling quality that somehow makes a monolith of the contemporary female form, as distinct from the “Venus” of antiquity.

Momberg has also turned his hand to other subjects he admires, notably an immaculate full length sculptural portrait of Mahatma Gandhi, an edition of which can be viewed at the National Gallery and at the King George VI gallery in Port Elizabeth. The meticulous nature of Momberg’s work and the fact that he casts them himself means that he has at best produced one new sculpture a year over the last ten years, a remarkable and unique commitment to quality in an age of mass production. STUDIES: Port Elizabeth Technikon, under Hillary Graham and Neil Rodger, gaining a Teacher’s Diploma in Fine Art.