Strauss & Co

Radiant Irma Stern still life leads Strauss & Co’s offerings for second half of 2018

www.straussart.co.za

Strauss & Co, South Africa’s leading auction house, has experienced brisk trade in the period January to June, generating combined sales of R120 million (R120 588 713). The company’s three live sales, which this year included a new specialist auction exclusively focusing on contemporary art, generated the lion’s share of the turnover, netting R111 million (R111 053 588). Four online sales brought in R9.5 million (R9 530 200).

The half-year sales are tremendously encouraging, particularly as South Africa’s general economy languishes following poor first-quarter GDP results and tremors in the corporate sector.

“After a very exciting start to the year with South Africa’s first standalone contemporary art auction, we achieved solid results in our subsequent sales notwithstanding the challenging economic conditions,” said Frank Kilbourn, Strauss & Co’s chairperson. He expressed his satisfaction with the company’s overall performance, adding: “We are delighted to have consolidated our position as market leader for modern and contemporary South African art.”

Especially heartening is the performance of the contemporary art segment, which saw William Kentridge and Robert Hodgins place second and third respectively after Alexis Preller as the most valuable artists sold at auction in 2018.

Kentridge generated R7 938 138 from 25 lots sold while Hodgins achieved R6 029 252 from 28 lots sold. A museum-quality drawing by William Kentridge, Deep Pool (1996), from his series Colonial Landscapes, sold for R3 414 00 in June.

Irma Stern, Dahlias, signed and dated 1947, oil on canvas, 96 by 84cm, R8 000 000-12 000 000, from the Labia Family Trust

Alexis Preller, Head (Adapting Itself to the Unendurable), Sold R 7 055 600

But it is Preller who has emerged as the outstanding performer at Strauss & Co’s auctions so far in 2018. A fine selection of Prellers offered at the company’s June sale pushed his half-year sales total to R18 209 029 from just 13 lots sold. Preller’s Head (Adapting Itself to the Unendurable), an enigmatic portrait from 1949, was the highest individual lot fetching R7 055 600.

JH Pierneef came in fourth, with sales totalling R5 266 907 from 24 lots sold, followed by another landscape painter, Erik Laubscher, who netted R4 480 312 from just seven lots sold. Peter Clarke (R3 647 634), Walter Battiss (R3 244 168), Vladimir Tretchikoff (R3 057 451), Gregoire Boonzaier (R2 317 628) and Adriaan Boshoff R2 163 468) rounded off the table of most valuable artists.

The half-year results require a measure of interpretation. Auction bellwethers like Maggie Laubser, Irma Stern and Gerard Sekoto are notably absent from the half-year table. This is singularly a reflection on the slim trade in topquality works by these artists.

A fine social-realist work from Sekoto’s formative Sophiatown period, The Donkey Water Carrier (c.1939), fetched R1 079 960 in March. Stern will also doubtlessly shake up the all-male table when her floral still life, Dahlias (estimate R8 – R12 million), goes on sale in October.

Bina Genovese, Joint Managing Director & Auctioneer

Dr Alastair Clarke, Senior Art Specialist, Head of Department, Johannesburg, & Auctioneer

Measuring nearly a metre wide and high, Stern’s radiant study of the showiest of cut flowers claims an impeccable provenance that, along with its fine quality, will no doubt prompt vigorous bidding. Formerly owned by Cecilia and Ben Jaffe the painting was acquired in 1994 at a Cape Town sale led by the late Stephan Welz, Strauss & Co’s founding director. The Stern lot forms part of an exciting trove of works consigned to Strauss & Co by the Labia Family Trust. Alongside works by British, French, Hungarian and Italian painters, the Labia Family Trust consignment includes striking canvases by Gwelo Goodman, Terrence McCaw and Frans Oerder. Pieter Wenning’s bucolic 1918 study of Bishopscourt, The Yellow House (estimate

Susie Goodman, Executive Director, (Johannesburg Office) & Auctioneer

Johannesburg audiences will be able to view Stern’s expressionist masterpiece before it goes under the hammer at a special showing of this pioneering expressionist painter’s work at the Turbine Art Fair, Johannesburg (12 – 15 July 2018). Following on the success of his exhibition devoted to J.H. Pierneef at last year’s fair, Strauss & Co senior art specialist Wilhelm van Rensburg is curating the exhibition Life Force: The Still Lifes of Irma Stern.

Strauss & Co’s participation in the Turbine Art Fair art fair dovetails with a broader aim.