White Lilies, Irma Stern, 1936. Oil on canvas Sold by Strauss & Co, November 2010 Irma Stern, Dahlias. Estimate R8 000 000 – 12 000 000. From the Labia Family Trust To be sold at auction in Cape Town on 15 October 2018
e c r o F Life
The Still Lifes of Irma Stern
As the annual RMB Turbine Art Fair approaches, there’s much to be excited about. An exhibition of still lifes by Irma Stern, however, is already getting people talking. Dave Mann spoke to Strauss & Co’s Dr Alastair Meredith, Susie Goodman, and Wilhelm van Rensburg to find out a bit more.
T
he exhibition, presented by Strauss & Co and titled
where she was heavily influenced by German Expressionism,
Life Force: The Still Lifes of Irma Stern, will feature
before moving back to South Africa in 1920. From there, Stern
a host of works by the painter from a number of
travelled to destinations across Africa – including Zanzibar and
private collections. The exhibition also seeks to
the DRC. In 1926, Stern was married in Cape Town and acquired
expand on the notion of the ideal collector and what can
‘The Firs’, the house that is now known as the Irma Stern
be achieved in a lifetime of collecting. But with many of
Museum. She continued to travel and paint, and built up a strong
the artist’s works sitting in corporate or private collections,
relationship with her friend and muse, Frieda Feldman over the
Stern’s life and works aren’t widely known. So just who was
years, often staying in the Feldmans’ Johannesburg home. By
the painter Irma Stern?
the mid-1940s, Stern began to gain recognition as an established
Born in 1894 at Schweizer-Reneke in the Transvaal to German-Jewish parents, Stern spent much of her younger years travelling with her family to Berlin and to small towns and rural communities in South Africa. She lived and studied in Germany,
26 / Creative Feel / July 2018
artist and her works were exhibited in shows across South Africa and abroad. Stern passed away in 1966 at the age of 71. Just how much of Stern’s life and history can be gleaned from her still life paintings? According to Strauss & Co’s
