Ezrom Legae’s Beasts Roar Against Silence

Step into a world where contorted creatures speak truths that could not be spoken aloud. In its first major U.S. presentation, the High Museum of Art unveils the haunting, unforgettable work of Ezrom Legae (1938–1999), one of South Africa’s most courageous and imaginative voices.

Legae’s drawings — more than thirty in total — are alive with tension. Twisted bodies, sharp lines, and anguished forms push against the page, evoking a sense of confinement and unspoken grief. At first glance, these beasts may seem fantastical. Look closer, and they become unmistakably human.

Created under the shadow of apartheid, Legae’s work belongs to a lineage of South African artists who turned to metaphor to evade censorship and survive in a climate of fear. In the 1970s, amid the Soweto uprisings and state‑sanctioned brutality, he produced his most prolific series — pencil, ink, and charcoal studies in which animals stand in for the enforcers and victims of the regime. His marks are urgent, his compositions charged with a quiet, coded defiance.

Legae’s output slowed in the 1980s, but in the 1990s, during South Africa’s fragile political rebirth, he returned to the page. These later works wrestle with the paradox of freedom — celebrating the dismantling of apartheid while confronting the unfinished work of justice in a nation still marked by racism and poverty.

Seen together, Legae’s beasts are more than allegory. They are a chorus of resistance, a visual language born of danger and necessity, and a reminder that art can roar — even when the artist must whisper.

Exhibition Details: Ezrom Legae: Beasts, The High Museum of Art, Now showing through November 16, 2025. Admission: Members and Museum Pass: Free | Not-Yet-Members: $23.50

High Museum of Art

1280 Peachtree St NE, Atlanta, GA 30309

Cover Art Image Credit: LEGAE, E. (1994). Drawing for Dying Beast [Ink on paper]. African Art Gallery, New York, East, United States.