Business Art News
STRAUSS & CO SHATTERS R100-MILLION BARRIER www.straussart.com
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ape Town: A packed salesroom punctuated by enthusiastic applause acknowledged the fierce rivalry among collectors for top paintings, unseen in decades, at Strauss & Co’s red-letter autumn sale. The sale culminated in a record-breaking tally of R106 million in sales at a value sell-through rate of 93%. This performance is unrivalled in the marketplace.
Irma Stern cemented her status as the most sought-after South African artist at auction when three paintings from her celebrated Zanzibar period (1939–45) sold for a combined value of R52 million. Adding to the buoyant mood was the sale of Alexis Preller’s seminal cabinet painting Collected Images (Orchestration of Themes) for just over R10 million, a new South African record. Frank Kilbourn, Strauss & Co’s chairman, said: “This is the first-ever art auction in South Africa to achieve over R100 million in sales. The sellthrough rate of 93% is also unprecedented. It is a historic moment for the company and a wonderful way to celebrate our tenth year of business.” Kilbourn added: “This outstanding result is a major vote of confidence for Strauss & Co and the South African art market in general. We are especially grateful to our clients, both buyers and sellers, for entrusting their works with us.” The top-selling lot at Strauss & Co’s sale was a previously unrecorded Stern portrait of an Omani nobleman from the court of the Sultanate of Zanzibar. Painted during Stern’s second visit to Zanzibar in 1945 and acquired directly from the artist by the late collector Sol Munitz, Stern’s painting Arab sold to a telephone bidder for R20 484 000.
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The Munitz Collection consigned 15 lots to the sale, including Stern’s The Mauve Sari from 1946, which sold for R14 794 000, and Gerard Sekoto’s Saturday Afternoon, a bucolic street scene from his esteemed Eastwood period, which sold for R3 072 600. Paintings consigned from the Shill Collection also achieved outstanding prices. They included the world-record Preller work, as well as Stern’s 1939 portrait of a young woman wearing a yellow headscarf, Meditation, Zanzibar, which sold for R17 070 000 attracting the attention of a first-time Stern buyer. Also from the Shill Collection, Gwelo Goodman’s Interior Looking Out, Stellenrust sold for R216 220 and a small bronze of a bull by sculptor Sydney Kumalo achieved R421 060. The sale also included two important collections of decorative arts, notably a fine selection of Chinese and Japanese ceramics and works art from the Dr J.R. and Mary Strong Collection. International bidders vied by telephone for the Chinese pieces. A celadon and beige jade twohandled vase with five-clawed dragon motifs from the late Qing dynasty sold R227 600. A robin’s egg blue-glazed vase trounced the presale estimate, achieving R136 560, while a pale celadon jade brush washer fetched R96 730. There was also considerable interest in the Strong Collection’s carved pieces. A trio of Chinese snuff bottles, including a pink tourmaline example depicting a qilin (mythological hoofed creature), sold for R54 624. A nineteenth-century wood netsuke depicting a seated tiger achieved R34 140, the top price for a netsuke. The top lot from the Dr Johan Bolt Collection of important Cape furniture was a rare Southern Cape Neoclassical jonkmanskas from the early 19th century, which sold for R512 100. Right: Irma Stern, SOUTH AFRICAN 1894-1966, Arab, R 12 000 000 - 16 000 000, Sold R 20 484 000, The Sol Munitz Collection
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