The son of South African missionaries, Piet van Heerden was born in Malawi in 1917. In 1927, he was sent to boarding school in Wellington in the Boland area of the Western Cape and then on to Cradock High School in the Eastern Cape where he received his first formal art training. In 1939, he moved back to the Boland, settling in Worcester. Here he was mentored by artist <a href=" https://findartva