When 161 lots of art, furniture and decorative pieces go under the hammer on May 27 at Strauss & Co, they offer a chance to own part of the legacy of a man who put South Africa’s secondary art market on the map.
Ten years after his death, auction legend Stephan Welz still elicits reverence in local art circles. His name remains in the form of the eponymous auction house that he started and later sold, going on to establish Strauss & Co with business stalwarts Elisabeth Bradley and Conrad Strauss, but it’s more than that.
As Everard Read chair Mark Read says, “Welz was a highly intelligent man, with a rapier eye for a good picture.” An article former Sunday Times editor Ray Hartley wrote about him, a month before Welz’s death in 2015, summed it up. The auctioneer grew up in the art world. His father was acclaimed modernist painter Jean Welz, he knew the market backwards and was not mincing his words about any of it. “Collectors are like gamblers. They always tell you of their successes. The failures? They give them to their nieces as wedding presents,” he told Hartley.
The Joburg house in Parkwood that Welz and his wife Carmen shared and where they raised their children was a jewel box of storied delights. The couple’s collection of art, furniture and decorative pieces was eclectic, beguiling and teeming with provenance.
Now Carmen and the family are selling a selection of these items at Strauss & Co, and in the mix are some finds to be pounced on, irrespective of budget.
Welz would surely have been tickled at the notion of a lucky buyer fenagling a treasure that once bought him joy. Among beautiful blue-and-white ceramics, Cape furniture, books and artworks, here are the FM’s favourites:
Ponte Vecchio, Florence, Irma Stern, 1937
Estimate: R400,000–R600,000
Depicting a rare European subject from Stern, the painting is singled out by Strauss & Co’s chief curator Wilhelm van Rensburg as “phenomenal”.
Fugue No 45, Jean Welz, 1960–1963
Estimate: R150,000–R200,000
Jean Welz trained as an architect under the French icon Le Corbusier. He practised the craft in Europe and South Africa before turning to art. Fugue No 45 is one of three standout Welz abstract pieces on the sale and Van Rensburg notes how strongly they are reminiscent of “Corb” — modernist, architectural and magical.
Two Xhosa women, Dorothy Kay
Estimate: R5,000-R8,000
This charming work is one of the commercial illustrations that celebrated painter Kay produced for magazines in the 1930s and 1940s, making it historically unusual.
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