Mathijs Isaac Nel was a well-known artist, potter, writer, playwright, poet and philosopher. He was born on 8 June 1943 on the farm Waterkloof in the Waterberg near Ellisras and grew up in the North-West Transvaal. He matriculated from Merensky High School in Tzaneen, after which he completed his year of military service and then studied art at the University of the Witwatersrand. He obtained a B.A. degree in Fine Arts. From 1965 to 1970 he was art editor of Die Vaderland. Between 1970 and 1975 he lived, worked and studied in Paris in France, first for two years at the Cité International des Arts, where he completed murals at Bois d'Arcy and Neuilly-sur-Marne and studied lithography in the studios of Henri Deprest and Jean-Paul Pons. He then shares a studio with opera director and designer Jean-Yves Taverniér, where he gains valuable experience in using light effects. On his return to South Africa, he settled in Ferndale in Randburg, where he has his own studio and holds more than forty art exhibitions there as well as elsewhere, such as at the Rand Afrikaans University, other locations in South Africa and in France, Botswana and Zimbabwe. His fascination with the ancient beauty of the subcontinent causes him to visit India several times.
From 1990 he began to explore the possibilities of clay and ceramics in the art. In 1997 he and his partner Johan Gerber moved to Oudtshoorn, where he was actively involved with the Felix Trust, which provides clay houses in response to South Africa's housing emergency. Some of his artworks have been incorporated into numerous museums and private collections and his work is represented in public and private collections in France, the United Kingdom, the United States, the Netherlands, Israel, Ethiopia, South Africa and China. Among his commissioned work are the 1971 murals in the dining room of the Amadeus Mozart School in Bois d'Arcy near Versailles in France, the décor for Sukovs' production of Don Pasquale and several fountains for famous gardens, including the Peace for Africa Fountain on the campus of the University of Pretoria. At the Language Day celebration of the ATKV (Kannaland) in Oudtshoorn on 12 August 2005 he gives a speech about Langenhoven as an artist.