George Velaphi Mzimba was born in Dube in 1959. He comes from an average Sowetan family in Gauteng, South Africa. He is the only son of Mr. and Mrs. Peter Mzimba and he has three sisters, two older than him.
Velaphi is a painter of portraits, still life, figures, abstracts, street scenes and township life. His later work has concentrated on giant panels of still life fruits and vegetables and more especially giant African ethnic heads for which he has received very profitable commissions. He is under contract to the Everard Reid Gallery in Johannesburg.
He studied between 1975 and 1976 at the Mofolo Art Center in Soweto under Dan Rakgoathe and from 1978 to 1980 under Bill Ainslie.
In 1985 he taught at the Thusong Youth Center, Alexandra, Johannesburg and from 1986 has taught at the Open School, Johannesburg
Exhibitions:
He has participated in group exhibitions from 1975 in South Africa and Germany. In 1981 he exhibited at the SAAA Gallery in the Carlton Center in Johannesburg. This was the first of several solo exhibitions held in South Africa, Swaziland, Northern Ireland, Germany, Namibia and the USA. He is now on permanent exhibition at the Everard Reid Galleries in South Africa and the USA. He is reputed to now be amongst the top ten highest earning artists in South Africa.
