Mr Philip Spies Venter is the first South African ever to be awarded a scholarship in the Arts field. His scholarship covered the academic years 1963/4 during which time he was attached to the Sculpture Department of the St Martin's School of Art, London.
Mr Venter followed a course in Experimental Sculpture. He worked mainly in stone and welded metal. He produced in addition a large number of sketch works for projected sculptures using a variety of materials. He also personally cast works in bronze, some of which he took back to South Africa with him.
These have excited praise and admiration from his masters, colleagues, friends and the Scholarships Director of the British Council.
He has been very highly thought of by the Head of the Sculpture Department in the St Martin's School of Art who considers him an intelligent sensitive person, and an artist with a great deal of natural talent in his own right. He has been commended most particularly for his accomplished professional approach to his subject.
He has been enormously helped by study visits to various places and people of specialist interests to him, not the least of which was the stimulating period he was fortunate to spend with Henry Moore, O.M.C.H.
(The British Council - Ref : SA/163/59)
Since his appointment to the staff of this college Mr. Venter has given great impetus to the teaching of Basic Design, Volume Design and Sculpture. He is a most gifted artist and teacher and he has the capacity to enthuse his students and to make clear to them to most subtle aesthetic conceptions. He is in my opinion a leading expert on the teaching of Volume Design.
Mr. Venter's specialist knowledge of ceramics led to his appointment as head of that department in 1965. Under his guidance the technical and aesthetic standard has grown apace: I believe the quality of work must be equal if not higher than in any other Ceramics Department in South Africa.
(College of Art - W.R. Philip - Ref : S.1.)
Mr. Venter is a very distinguished young Artist, who after having gained the National Art Teachers' Diploma with distinction in his major subjects Painting & Sculpture, became the recipient of the E.R. Searle Bursary (1959) and a British Council Scholarship (1963/1964), enabling him to further his studies in Holland and Italy and at the St. Martin's School of Art, London. He has had several highly successful exhibitions in Johannesburg. At the present he is working on a number of important design commissions to be incorporated in buildings.
(School of Art - P.C. Botha)
In the professional field Mr. Venter is one of our foremost sculptors, and his decision to leave the teaching profession is directly due to his need to devote himself to the practice of his profession in a full-time capacity. It is therefore to be regretted that he is leaving the teaching profession, but we are nevertheless sure that his decision is the right one, and one which will enrich the art of this country.
(Department of Art & Design - Technikon Witwatersrand - W.R. Philip)
Lucy met my stepfather, Brian, when she went to lessons with Brian's artist father, W.G. Wiles, in Knysna. She married him in 1954 and my sister and I officially took his name, Wiles. Brian also started painting at this time. We moved to Knysna and went to school in Port Elizabeth where I matriculated from the Senior Collegiate School for Girls in 1963 with academic subjects. I studied art in the afternoons at the PE Technikon. The only lecturer I remember was Spies Venter.
(Jane Wiles)
Spies Venter, who headed the Ceramics Department from the mid-1960's to 1980, played an influential role in the lives of scores of aspirant potters. John Skotnes remembered: "He was a fantastic man, terribly warm, but over the top, dramatic; there was a drama about Spies... it was like a Shakespeare performance."
(John Skotnes)