Durant Basi Sihlali was born on 5 March 1935 in an industrial area, Germiston, Transvaal, now known as Gauteng Province. Due to harsh living conditions, his parents sent him to live with his paternal grandparents in a rural village called Cala in the Eastern Cape. The wall murals Xhosa women painted captivated Sihlali, who tried to imitate the designs but was chastised for engaging in what was considered a women’s job.

Born in 1975 in Cape Town, Nicholas Hlobo grew up in a Xhosa family and attended university at the former Technikon Witwatersrand. Though originally planning to study art in order to work in the film industry, Hlobo decided to pursue a career as a visual artist as another way of contributing to South African culture.

Welcome Mandla Koboka was born in Johannesburg in 1941. At age twenty he studied art under Cecil Skotnes and Ephraim Ngatane at the Polly Street Art Centre. He worked in charcoal, inks, watercolours and oils, becoming most recognised for his paintings.

David Hlongwane was born on 1 January 1963 in the Zwelethemba township of Worcester. He studied at Vuyisile High School, without completing Matric. Looking at books and magazines inspired his first drawings, which he cultivated without formal instruction.