Peter Clarke was born in Simon’s Town. He studied etching at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town in 1961. He also studied at Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam in 1962/3, and participated in a course on printmaking at the Atelier Nord in Oslo, in 1978.
In 2013 a major retrospective of Clarke’s work was presented by the Standard Bank Gallery in Johannesburg and the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town, accompanied by the comprehensive publication on his life and work, Listening to Distant Thunder: The Art of Peter Clarke, by Phillipa Hobbs and Elizabeth Rankin (2011).
Local and international honours awarded to the artist include Honorary Life Membership of the Museum of African American Art, Los Angeles (1983); the Order of Ikhamanga (2005) awarded to South Africans who have excelled in the fields of art and culture; and the Arts and Culture Trust Lifetime Achievement award (2010).
