LANDSKIP NICOLAAS MARITZ
UCT IRMA STERN MUSEUM
LAN D S K I P New Landscape Works
NICOLAAS MARITZ 11 MAY - 1 JUNE 2019
UCT IRMA STERN MUSEUM CAPE TOWN
Nemesia*Press_online
CONTENTS Introduction Plates: No.1 - No.41 No. 42, APRIL GARGOYLE Exhibition Views Biography
UCT Irma Stern Museum Nicolaas Maritz Website
INTRODUCTION
LAN D S K I P “ Guarda che luna, guarda che mare ” Italian pop tune from 1959, performed by Fred Buscaglione
Most of the landscape works on this exhibition were inspired by a road trip through the Northern Cape and southern part of Namibia during December 2018. Flat and barren wastes, now and then interspersed with sudden crusty rock formations with deep shadows, such personable geological events in an otherwise seemingly endless wasteland. This seemingly inhospitable dry landscape glided by, as the tar road stretched straight ahead, like a pencil line over brown paper. No rain has fallen here since I don’t know when. But it’s beautiful in its own repulsive way. There were few people about, and the one’s I noticed, seemed to appear out of nowhere, and to be living very far apart. The sheep looked tired, in the nicest way possible. The inhospitable aspect of the landscape was exacerbated by extremely hot weather during the day. And a blistering sun. But towards evening a surprisingly cool wind came up. At night the moon and the stars were so much more brilliant than I could recall. The fresh morning landscape was deliciously bathed in a soft and surreal violet light, which I found didn’t photograph well at all. But the purples have always been such difficult colours, especially when it comes to painting; so often too telling, too prosaic…
Crossing the national border between South Africa and Namibia held its own grim fascination; the stern officialese; the strictly formalised process of leaving and entering; the anxious faces of tourists, uncertain in this sudden existential moment, alarmed by loud stamping noises from behind a bullet-proof glass partition. It is a venerable rite of passage, approaching a nightmare, but stoically borne. Back home, I have to trust my memory to create a painted version of my journey; to re-live some of the landscapes. In doing this, I like afresh the problematic flat dimensionality of layered paint, the ambiguous order of a chaotic mess, and the ironic coolth of emotionally charged colour. I feel I have succeeded if a successful photograph cannot be taken of the work; that something is left to the intimacy of a primary encounter.
I certainly hope to be painting and showing pictures till I die. This I say to myself over another cup of milky tea. A hill with trees. The sea at sunrise. The sea almost any time of day. Blindingly bright days. Cold and bleak winter weather. The golden glow of autumnal light. All these things we can share. No-one can take this away from us. (Oh dear, I clean forgot about global warming. Shit shit shit!) Nicolaas Maritz, Darling, April 2019
1. Ancient Hill with Pink Sky, 2019, enamel paint on board. 292 x 430mm
2. Signs of Grass on a Hot Hill, 2018, enamel paint on board. 290 x 490mm
3. Geological Slice, 2018, enamel paint on board. 295 x 430mm
4. Green Summer Sky, 2019, enamel paint on board. 295 x 418mm
5. Night Coloured Landscape, 2019, enamel paint on board. 300 x 489mm
6. Hill with Red Hot Rocks, 2019, enamel paint on board. 300 x 420mm
7. Baked Pudding Hill, 2019, enamel paint on board. 270 x 360mm
8. Memory of Water, 2018, enamel paint on board, 2019. 290 x 420mm
9. Virulent Stars, 2019, enamel paint on board. 289 x 366mm
10. Clear Night Light, 2019, enamel paint on board. 295 x 420mm
11. Blue Moon Reflection, 2019, enamel paint on board. 388 x 488mm
12. Red Hill under a Silvering Moon, 2019, enamel paint on board. 403 x 489mm
13. Nightland, 2019, enamel paint on board. 240 x 435mm
14. Two Rehoboth Hills, 2019, enamel paint on board. 358 x 600mm
15. Full Moon near Garies, 2018, enamel paint on board. 538 x 604mm
16. Blue Moonlight, 2018, enamel paint on board. 457 x 401mm
17. Brown Bush Moon, 2018, enamel paint on board. 900 x 1209mm
18. Garden of the Golden Hill, 2018/19, enamel paint on board. 622 x 1201mm
19. Night Heat, 2019, enamel paint on board. 360 x 486mm
20. Round Hill near Rehoboth, 2019, enamel paint on board. 640 x 493mm
21. Candy Stripe Landscape, 2019, enamel paint on board. 295 x 420mm
22. Night Red Hill, 2019, enamel paint on board. 492 x 820mm
23. Hill Construction, 2019, enamel paint on board. 410 x 800mm (above)
24. Starless Night, 2019, enamel paint on board. 512 x 800mm (right)
25. Koppie near Aris, 2019, enamel paint on board. 695 x 800mm
26. Flowering Thorn Trees near Windhoek, 2019, enamel paint on board. 590 x 790mm
26A. Silver and Blue, 2019, enamel paint on board, 320 x 480mm
27. A 1959-style Windhoek Koppie, 2019, enamel paint on board. 790 x 590mm
28. Red Anthill near Aranos, 2019, enamel paint on board. 790 x 590mm
29. Klein-Windhoek Koppie, 2019, enamel paint on board. 790 x 790mm
30. Thorny Shrubs near Avis Dam, 2019, enamel paint on board. 590 x 790mm
31. Table Bay Flashback Moon, 2018/19, enamel paint on board. 790 x 590mm
32. Yellow Moon near Kleine Kuppe, 2019, enamel paint on board. 716 x 601mm
33. Sectional Nightscape (Four parts), 2018/19, enamel paint and mixed media on board, 1000 x 2330mm.
34. Kaolin Hill, 2019, enamel paint on board, 1600 x 1180mm
35. Silver Dewscape near Dordabis, 2019, enamel paint on board, 1420 x 1200mm
36. Russet Morningscape near Grunau, 2019, namel paint on board, 1240 x 1420mm
37. Redthorn Bushveld, 2019, enamel paint on board, 1200 x 1050mm
38. Blackthorn Veld, 2019, enamel paint on board, 1180 x 970mm
39. Red Starlight, 2019, enamel paint on board, 1210 x 1220mm
40. Darling Graveyard Cypress Stars, 2004/2019, wood, mixed media with enamel paint 1460 x 2150mm
41. RIGHT: Beskilderde Lappieskombers-landskap (Painted Patchwork Blanket Landscape), 2019, (composite work), cardboard, mixed media with enamel paint, dimensions variable.
LEFT: Detail
42. APRIL GARGOYLE, 2019 art video for pc or tv, duration: 18.38 minutes Non-profit / free viewing on Youtube By the evening of 15 April 2019, most of the western world was aware, via the media, that the Paris Notre Dame cathedral was aflame; quite plainly a massive cultural disaster. Spectacular photographs, especially ones taken at night, flooded the internet. I immediately realized that the still images, some of them from private cell phones and cameras, were by far the most compelling. To say that the disaster was photogenic is to understate the matter. Without any specific idea in mind I started collecting internet images from Google and Facebook. The next day’s images of a burnt out church carcass were less dramatic, but somehow struck me as more powerful. I realized that I was looking at the inside of the church as a ‘landscape’, and what I was looking at; fire debris and ashes, bore some resemblance to two existing works on the exhibition, No. 40, Darling Graveyard Cypress Stars and No 41, Beskilderde Lappieskomberslandskap (Painted Patchwork Blanket Landscape). It occurred to me that APRIL GARGOYLE, when I had finally put it together, belonged with the LANDSKIP exhibition.
1. APRIL GARGOYLE 2. SMOKE DETECTOR
3. INFERNO 4. THE NEXT DAY 5. APRIL IN PARIS VIDEO LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj7ig4LpGV8
EXHIBITION VIEWS
BIOGRAPHY Nicolaas Maritz was born in 1959 in Pretoria. He went to school in Pretoria and Port Elizabeth. In 1977, he qualified as an army chef and butcher. From 1978 - 1981 he received tertiary art education at the University of Cape Town. His first one man exhibition was held in 1976, in Port Elizabeth, and he has exhibited regularly at galleries and museums in South Africa and overseas. The artist’s works are represented in most of the art museums and public collections in South Africa. His work can be seen at the South African National Gallery, Pretoria and Johannesburg Art Museums, the art collections of the University of Cape Town, Sasol US Museum, and the Sanlam art collection. Maritz has lectured in art and design at the universities of Cape Town and Stellenbosch, as well as at private art schools in Cape Town and Pretoria. The artist has received recognition for graphic design, and for illustrations of children’s and other books, notably two American illustration awards. Nicolaas Maritz has extensive internet presence, and any search result will show several sites, image galleries, as well as references to his work as an experimental musician. The artist lives and works in Darling, where he has a permanent exhibition space, the Maritz Museum, open to the public by appointment. His hobbies are cooking, gardening and armchair installation art.
UCT IRMA STERN MUSEUM CAPE TOWN
Cecil Road, Rosebank, Cape Town Tel: 021 685 5686 / Fax: 021 686 7550 http://www.irmasternmuseum.org.za/
OPENING HOURS:
Tuesday- Friday from 10am-5pm Saturday from 10am-2pm Closed public holidays
Nicolaas Maritz website
https://sites.google.com/view/nicolaasmaritzgallery