Auction house Strauss & Co kicks off its Johannesburg Auction Week on November 3 with five live virtual sales happening over the seven days.
The week of consecutive sales follows 44 other auctions the company has already conducted this year, and is further proof of how buoyant the South African secondary art market is. This year the auction house has sold items ranging from R1,000 to R10.5m in price. Its turnover so far is just over R280m.
This latest round of auctions includes modern and contemporary art as well as fine wine and sculpture, and ends with a themed sale called Three Robs: Artist, Collaborator, Friend on November 9.
Robert Hodgins
The themed event focusing on the work of Robert Hodgins is undoubtedly the star sale of the week. As the first ever devoted to the influential London-born South African artist, it follows several successful single-artist auctions held by Strauss & Co, including those for work by William Kentridge and Jacob Hendrik Pierneef.
The sale is made up of 40 lots and includes work dating from the mid-1980s to the artist’s death in 2010. Many of these pieces are from the Hodgins estate. They include oils, rare watercolours, monotypes, pastels and drawings.
The Strauss & Co team has also curated a small retrospective of some of the artworks at the Houghton Estate offices of the auction house. The exhibition is open to the public and it is a real joy to see — it illustrates Hodgins’s bold expressionist style and talent as a colourist.
Hodgins was a serial collaborator and worked with a who’s who of the local art world. A number of pieces that he created with Deborah Bell, Kendell Geers, Kentridge, Jan Neethling and Sam Nhlengethwa will be on auction.
Couple, a vivid and colourful work by Nhlengethwa and Hodgins, is described by Strauss & Co’s senior art specialist and head curator Wilhelm van Rensburg as “spectacular”. The painting features an embracing couple and has a sale estimate of between R180,000 and R240,000. Hodgins painted a substantial part of the couch and figures in the piece before handing over to Nhlengethwa to work his magic. The latter, well known for his love of music and using a trademark dark blue hue, then included a depiction of a painting of Ella Fitzgerald in the painting.
Nhlengethwa later said of Hodgins: “I can say so much about Robert, but I am always thrilled and charmed whenever I see one of his paintings; they are so dynamic. I used to tell him: ‘Rob, keep on using my favourite blue colour; you’ve got the magic touch with it as well.’”
Pretty Boy Floyd is another Hodgins piece up for sale. The artist created this mixed media and collage work on paper in 1980 for a printmaking collaboration exhibition at the Market Theatre with his lifelong friend, Neethling. Together the duo’s printmaking experiments focused on a photograph of a depression era gangster, Charles Arthur Floyd — also known as Pretty Boy Floyd. Hodgins and Neethling took the screen-printed photographs they’d created and embellished them with other mediums.
Interestingly, though these works were a hit 20 years later, in 1980 they were anything but. Van Rensburg says the early show was ahead of its time and that today the work has an estimated value of R20,000-R30,000.
A round-up of the rest
The lots on offer in the four other sales offer a cross-section of some of South Africa’s best contemporary artists. Here are a few works to keep an eye on.
Sculpture
An auction that explores local sculpture, titled In/Form, takes place on November 7 and features the work of many of our finest sculptors including Edoardo Villa, Anton van Wouw, Angus Taylor and Sydney Kumalo.
Standouts are three painted and fired terracotta clay figures: The Meeting, Leopard and Chicken and Table. These charming pieces are by Lesotho-born Josephine Ghesa, who learnt to build pots from her grandmother.
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Ghesa would later go on to work at the celebrated Ardmore farm, where she was encouraged to explore sculpture. Her work is often inspired by folklore and the spiritual and ancestral realm.
Senior art specialist at Strauss & Co, Alastair Meredith, says it’s remarkable to have three museum-standard works by Ghesa on auction. The lots have sales estimates of R50,000-R70,000 each.
Several pieces by the lesser-known sculptor Job Kekana are on sale as well. Kekana was born in 1916 and trained at a mission school. His education had a significant influence on his work, which was naturalistic in style and often depicted religious subjects. His detailed panel Miracles in the Garden of Gethsemane is one such example. The seven Kekana pieces on auction also include a self-portrait and have sales estimates ranging from R15,000 to R40,000.
Paintings and works on paper
The Modern and Contemporary Art auction takes place on November 8. The sale, a delightful survey of (mostly) local art, is well worth a look, even if you aren’t planning to bid. Artworks include those by South African artists Irma Stern, Lady Skollie and Walter Battiss, and there’s also a piece by British-Nigerian art rock star Yinka Shonibare.
One of the most fascinating artworks on auction is Karoo KP by Pierneef, who is South Africa’s most iconic landscape painter. Its estimate is a cool R2m-R3m.
The painting is beautiful, but its provenance and back story add a layer of extra magic. It was gifted to Hoërskool Sentraal in Bloemfontein by its graduating class in 1951, and the back of the artwork is signed by the entire class. The money from its sale will go to the school.
Kentridge, South Africa’s most celebrated living artist, is in the line-up too. His solo exhibition at the Royal Academy in London is at present the talk of the town, but the 17 Kentridge works on auction over the week, including Peonies with Book, are causing chatter too. This large Indian ink piece has an estimate of between R2.5m and R3.5m.
Without a doubt the largest and most eye-catching piece on auction is the wondrously colourful, site-specific Mural for a Durban Dining Room by Andrew Verster. Commissioned in 1994 by Judge Alan Magid and Brenda Magid, the piece measures 6m in length and is 2m high. It has an estimated value of R400,000-R600,000 and is aptly described as “a magnificent and riotous tangle of vegetation — vast, transportive and bursting with colour”.
* Strauss & Co offers a selection of walkabouts with specialists in the run-up to the auction week
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