A browse through the catalogue for Strauss & Co’s live virtual auction on September 19 is like taking a digital wander through a museum dedicated to more than a century of fine South African art. The oils, tapestries and mixed media works are gems in a glittering jewel box that is the brand’s marquee spring sale.
It makes for exciting art shopping, and is the culmination of Strauss & Co’s Cape Town auction week, which takes place from September 17-19 and includes a handful of other sales.
Here is the FM’s pick of exceptional, interesting works to covet.
Praying Arab, Irma Stern
Estimate: R16m-R18m
You’re going to need to cash in a couple of liquid assets to pick up this oil (featured on the cover of the auction catalogue). It’s the auction highlight, dated to 1945, and in an original hand-carved wooden frame.
A true pioneer of the modernist expressionist movement in South Africa, Stern is known for her generous use of bright, expressive colours. She travelled extensively through Africa, looking for models to paint, and made two working trips to the island of Zanzibar, spending months in Stone Town.
This period of work (from about 1933 to 1948) is seen as her golden period, and Praying Arab is a particularly fine example of it.
Stern had a keen interest in religion and often painted Muslims, whether in her home city of Cape Town, or in Dakar or Zanzibar. Praying Arab was included in a 2021 Stern-focused exhibition at the Norval Foundation titled The Zanzibar Years.
Other works by the artist are also up for grabs, including the eye-catching Red Dahlias and Still Life with Flat Irons, Apples and Blossoms in a Jug.
Early Evening on Slangkop, CP, Peter Clarke
Estimate: R120,000-R160,000
At first glance, this 1987 piece from the prolific artist, author and poet is an enduringly modern interpretation of a corner of the Cape peninsula, with its big skies and scrub-dotted grey rock outcrops. Beyond its aesthetic appeal, this exceptional collage work stands as a surprising symbol of personal trauma and South Africa’s dark history.
In 1973, under the apartheid government’s Group Areas Act, Clarke and his family were forcibly removed from their home in Simon’s Town and relocated to the bleak Slangkop development over the mountain (now Ocean View, near Kommetjie). As a result of the distress of the brutal move, Clarke did very little art in his early years in Slangkop — but this piece is one of a few exceptions.
He lived in Ocean View for the rest of his life, making art, and prints in particular, that depicted the dispossessed community he was part of.
Girl Seated on a Chair, Neil Rodger
Estimate: R300,000-R500,000
The works of this late Eastern Cape artist, including those that depict elegant, otherworldly beauties, are not easily available, so it’s worth taking note when one appears on auction.
Rodger was initially one of the Grahamstown Group of painters of the 1970s under Brian Bradshaw. After setting off on his own path, and heavily inspired by the European tradition of art and artists such as Balthus and Ingres, he became one of the finest portraitists of his generation. He captured the great and the good, though even they took on the quality of his imaged figures in their dreamlike Palladian villas.
“He could smear paint on a canvas like no other in South Africa,” says Mark Read, chair of art gallery Everard Read — Rodger’s dealer for all his career.
In this lot, the trademarks of Rodger’s painting are evident. They include the dreamy nude figure with face out of focus, spectacularly painted fabric juxtaposed with moments of flat colour, and the surreal quality of the scene.
Ityhengetyhenge, Nicholas Hlobo
Estimate: R1m-R1.5m
Born in Cape Town in 1975, Hlobo is one of South Africa’s finest contemporary talents, and has had solo exhibitions in the US, Sweden and the UK — at London’s Tate Modern in 2008/2009.
While probably best known for his sculptures, he has produced several artworks in the style of this 2015 piece. If it reminds you of a delicate jellyfish with its long tentacle-like shapes, you’re not alone. Hlobo’s works have regularly been compared to these mesmerising sea creatures.
The materiality of Hlobo’s tactile and rich layering is central to his work. He ingeniously uses a range of materials including wood, leather and copper to create two- and three-dimensional objects. In Ityhengetyhenge ribbon and rubber on canvas are in play.
The varied materials each hold an association for the artist and are symbolic of his constant exploration of topics such as gender, ethnicity, race, identity culture and gay identity. As Hlobo told Sean O’Toole in a 2011 interview: “I enjoy my interference with the material, not using an artificial tool like a camera or having the material laser-cut. It is my way of inserting myself into the object, of putting my soul into it.”
Red Amaryllis, Maggie Laubser
Estimate: R200,000-R300,000
It’s inevitable that Laubser gets compared to her contemporary, Stern. They both trained and mixed with the German expressionists and were deeply influenced by that movement. They were also both responsible for bringing this early 20th-century style of art back to the conservative Cape — and were widely criticised for it too.
Laubser’s work may not have achieved the same value or acclaim as Stern’s, but it is nevertheless joyful and engaging and has many fans.
She loved nature — a point well illustrated by the number of floral still lifes to her name. It is a topic she returned to often in her career, but Red Amaryllis is especially vibrant. As Strauss & Co’s senior art specialist Ian Hunter says: “This early work has the immediacy of being painted directly from life, and is surprisingly naturalistic, considering that Laubser tended to stylise a lot of her subjects. It is a depiction that carries the speed of the artist’s observations — it is so liquid and so fresh.”
World on its Hind Legs, William Kentridge and Gerhard Marx
Estimate: R1.5m-R2m
This painted steel sculpture might not be in everyone’s budget but it’s certainly a collectable knockout.
With a huge international as well as local following, Kentridge is known for his prints, drawings, animated films, theatre productions and sculpture. Really, what doesn’t he do? He met Marx, a graduate of the Michaelis School of Fine Art, in the early 2000s, when he was employed by the Handspring Puppet Company. Together the artists created the 11m public sculpture The Firewalker in downtown Joburg.
This smaller piece comprises two images: a red circle and a globe astride divider-like legs. The image changes according to where the viewer stands, but there is visual coherence from only two specific positions. In 2017, a much larger 4mx5m version of this artwork was installed as a public sculpture in Beverly Hills, California.
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