Irma Stern was born in 1894 at Schweizer-Reneke, a small town in South Africa. Her parents were German, and she studied in Berlin and Weimar during the 1920s. During this time she was greatly influenced by the Expressionist movement of the time, although upon arriving back in South Africa, her work was initially dismissed by the conservative taste present in 1920s South Africa. She only became an established artist in South Africa in the 1940s. She travelled extensively during her adulthood and this would add a depth and breadth to her work that would ultimately put her at the vanguard of South African masters. Her travels included trips to Europe, Zanzibar, the Congo, Swaziland, and Senegal.  She had almost one hundred solo exhibitions during her lifetime both in South Africa and Europe. She died in 1966, and in 1971 her home in Cape Town was turned into the Irma Stern Museum.