The single-session auction will include a tailored selection of art lots, including two lots apiece by auction trailblazers JH Pierneef and Irma Stern, as well as five icon wines, among them an 1821 vintage of Grand Constance, South Africa’s oldest and most illustrious wine brand. The sale is expected to earn up to R14 million and includes Stern’s Bathers at Nice, a 1965 oil portraying three naked bathers on the French Riviera (estimate R1.5 – 2 million).
The time period under consideration is bracketed by Hugo Naudé’s uplifting spring composition, Namaqualand Flowers and Quiver Tree (estimate R700 000 – 1 000 000) and Georgina Gratrix’s bountiful still life from 2021, All that Glitters (R70 000 – 90 000). All the proceeds of the sale of the Gratrix lot will benefit the KZNSA Gallery, Durban. Naudé aside, other notable Cape impressionists in this sale include Gwelo Goodman and Pieter Wenning, whose Rietdakhuis, Mowbray, Cape (estimate R400 000 – 600 000) distils the late-career élan experienced by the artist before his premature death.
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“The sale, which is exclusively composed of works by South African artists, helps make sense of some of the many stylistic and conceptual shifts that have taken place in this country over the past century,” says Alastair Meredith, who heads up Strauss & Co’s art department. “Many of the works in Impression/Expression, whether painted or sculpted, mid-century or contemporary, can sit comfortably in the impressionism or expressionism categories. Works from each school, however, can still be tied together by theme, tone, impulse or style. Impressionist pictures, for instance, can capture the transience of light, can be stirred by modernity, and in pursuit of atmospheric sensation. Many expressionist works, moreover, are made with instinct, are defined by intimacy, and drawn to visual anarchy. The works in Impression/Expression are presented with these often overlapping attributes in mind.”
The sale also includes an exciting crop of contemporary women artists, among them Maaike Bakker, Io Makandal, Yolanda Mazwana, Lucy Jane Turpin and Kylie Wentzel. Their diverse practices are contextualized by the inclusion of works by prominent earlier artists such as Leonora Everard-Haden, Maggie Laubser, Judith Mason, Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi, Nita Spilhaus and Hannatjie van der Wat. Similar to previous bespoke auctions organised by the Johannesburg office of Strauss & Co, such as the phenomenally successful single-artist sale devoted to JH Pierneef in July, this sale is supported by an extensive e-catalogue.