Arno Carstens

Arno Carstens has been a defining force in South Africa’s contemporary cultural landscape for over three decades, bridging the worlds of music and fine art.

A graphic art student with early ambitions as a painter, Arno spent thirteen years touring as frontman of Springbok Nude Girls and as a solo artist before returning to painting in 2007. He’s released eight solo albums and won multiple South African Music Awards, including Best Rock Album for his multiplatinum solo debut, Another Universe (2003). Arno continues to record and tour, recently earning two SAMA nominations for AC/ES, his latest music project with Evert Snyman. He’ll release his ninth solo album in 2027.

Arno works primarily in oil on canvas. His paintings occupy a liminal space, where subject and viewer meet at the threshold between states, blooming and fading, grounded and transcendent, utterly familiar and completely strange. Vivid, figurative, and psychologically charged, they explore the human form, mythological themes, and bold colour with striking presence and emotional depth.

His debut solo exhibition was held at The Lovell Gallery in Woodstock in 2012. He has collaborated with South African artists Beezy Bailey and Barend de Wet, and his work spans oil on canvas and digital media. Career highlights include a 9 x 12 metre installation at NFT.NYC in Brooklyn, USA (2023), and Art Basel Miami, USA (2022). His work is held in private collections across South Africa and beyond.

His current body of work, Immortal Blooms, looks directly at flowers and finds in them that beauty is not fragile, that it survives.

Forged through fearless creative practice across disciplines, Arno Carstens continues to shape South Africa’s artistic heritage.

He lives and works in Cape Town.