![Irma Stern, ‘Three African Women’, signed and dated 1941, oil on canvas [detail]. Photo © Strauss & Co](https://images.prismic.io/barnebys/5747598d-fd38-4dd7-9990-2164a7931f80_Cover.jpg?auto=format,compress)
Commanding portrayals of women are in the spotlight of South African auction house Strauss & Co’s forthcoming live-virtual sale in Johannesburg. Due to be held over three consecutive days, from Sunday 16 to Tuesday 18 May, the sale includes some noteworthy rarities, with a diverse artist list that includes Nandipha Mntambo, Alexis Preller, William Kentrige and Irma Stern.
Strauss & Co executive director Susie Goodman says: “We have put together a solid catalogue of terrific works by important modern, post-war and contemporary artists. The sale includes outstanding oils by J.H. Pierneef, Alexis Preller and Penny Siopis, as well as significant bronzes by Lynn Chadwick, Sydney Kumalo and Edoardo Villa. During this period of restricted travel, especially across international borders, we have given careful attention to the format and presentation of this sale in order to best serve our global client base. The sale will feature an enhanced digital capacity that will enable remote buyers to dynamically engage with our superb offering.”
Alexis Preller’s two oils depicting traditional Mapogga (Ndebele) women both date from 1951. Starting in 1950, Preller fixated on depicting Mapogga women in a stylised manner. Grand Mapogga II (pictured above) is typical of his symbolic and poetic transformations of Mapogga matriarchs into totemic presences. Mapogga Terrace forms part of a small group of Ndebele village scenes executed in the early 1950s and presents its three subjects, all women, as scribes and custodians of traditional knowledge and values.
The catalogue for Strauss & Co’s sale includes five pictures by Irma Stern. Three African Women is a tightly framed study of a trio of amaMfengu (or Fingo) women which the artist likely encountered during her little documented 1941 trip to the Eastern Cape, then known as Pondoland. Still Life with Lilies (pictured above) dates from 1948, the golden age for works in this genre, and features a favourite flower displayed in a late-19th century Chinese storage jar thought to have been acquired in Zanzibar. Meanwhile, The Yellow Hat is a colour-drenched portrayal of a young man wearing a sou’wester rain hat. Stern frequently shuttled between South Africa and Europe by boat and developed a lifelong interest in depicting the traditions and labours of seafaring cultures.
The human figure is also a key subject among the sculpture lots. Sydney Kumalo’s magnificent bronze sculpture Saint Francis is one of the artist’s most prized works. The sculpture portrays the Christian saint who renounced a life of wealth and privilege to devote himself to serving the poor and vulnerable. The brilliance of Kumalo’s bronze rendering is the outcome of his conflation of Christian and African symbolism.
Other notable figurative bronzes in the sale include Dumile Feni’s Anguished Woman, four castings of which were produced late in 1967 or early 1968. Two examples of this work are in the collections of the University of Fort Hare and Norval Foundation. Nandipha Mntambo’s maquette for her well-known bronze Minotaurus is one of two such preliminary studies, the other being English sculptor Lynn Chadwick’s Walking Couple.
William Kentridge has a large collector base in his hometown of Johannesburg. Strauss & Co’s sale includes 14 lots by this celebrated resident of Houghton. Depicting the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla in Rome, Untitled Drawing for Il Ritorno d’Ulisse (pictured above) was one of roughly forty drawings which Kentridge made for the very first opera he directed, Il Ritorno d’Ulisse, commissioned by the organisers of the Kunsten Festival des Arts in Brussels in 1998.
Refugees (You Will Find No Other Seas) is an aquatint etching depicting a rowing boat overloaded with figures. Made from 36 brass plates, this ambitious Kentridge print is a translation of an earlier ink wash drawing. Untitled Drawing for Mango Groove Music Video (Crowd and Megaphone) depicts a key scene in the Kentridge-directed music video for Mango Groove’s 1993 song Another Country, with a banner-carrying crowd assembled around a tower topped with a megaphone.
Bernard Buffet, a French painter born in Paris in 1928, was a precocious young talent and at the age of 15 in 1943 he was admitted to the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His Environs de la Rochepot (La Grande Ferme) of 1973 renders a wintery farm scene in rural France. The canvas is bathed in a burst of sunlight breaking through looming dark clouds, momentarily casting a radiant golden hue across the farm. The brightly-lit farmstead is nestled against the deep emerald and moss tones of the hillside, and in the foreground Buffet captures a winding stream, a row of stark pollarded plane trees alongside the tall and spindly trees blowing in the wind.
Strauss & Co’s second marquee virtual live sale of 2021 will commence on Sunday 16 May and conclude on Tuesday 18 May. In addition to this exquisite selection of art on offer, a single-owner collection of fine wines from Bordeaux, Burgundy, Alsace and Champagne is taking place on the Sunday.
