When it comes to landscape painting, few regions in the world offer the variety, inspiration and sheer vistas of southern Africa’s scenery. Leading auction house Strauss & Co’s upcoming online-only auction offers art lovers a land(scape) of plenty – from the melancholy, whimsical impressionistic studies of Hugo Naudé, to Walter Battiss’s bold, primordial prints and John Meyer’s photorealistic depictions of rural South Africa.
‘A painful landscape’
Nostalgia drenches the South African landscape – the word nostalgia, with its original etymological roots in the Greek nostimon or ‘day of return’ and ‘alga’ meaning pain, speaks to our longing or yearning for the past. Even the most uninitiated neophyte in the South African art world will find it hard not to be transported back to childhood experiences of rural South Africa, or vacations in the Kruger National Park, when confronted with JH Pierneef’s paintings of the bushveld and its iconic thorn trees. Knowledge of the work of the artists of this country and their distinctive styles makes travel much more layered – a flash of a bluegum copse conjures images of Gregoire Boonzaier’s studies of gnarled Cape trees, reminiscent at times of Art Nouveau posters. The colour fields of the yellow canola lands, contrasted against the verdant green of the cultivated wheat pastures of the Overberg in Spring is like diving headfirst into an abstract Erik Laubscher painting.
Bare Oaks and Cottages, Winter.
Watercolour on paper.
R 20 000 – 30 000.
But the Southern African landscape is also fraught with conflict, division and complication. In the upcoming auction, this tension can be felt in Limpopo artists Dzunisani Maluleke’s charcoal work, Swatika Swilo (It’s Difficult), depicting telephone lines – a typical feature of the South African landscape. These speak about distance and separation. “I used telephone lines as a metaphor to portray the physical absence of my father. The only way I can communicate with him is via telephone. The series of landscapes, symbolised my journey and the places I have been to. The telephone line is a symbol of my father’s presence/absence,” he explains.
Swatika Swilo (It is Difficult).
Linocut on paper.
R 6 000 – 8 000.
Styles of landscapes
Wilhelm van Rensburg, Strauss & Co Senior Art Specialist, explains that while every artist has his or her own unique style of creating landscape art, the genre can typically be considered in three different categories: representational, impressionistic and abstract. “Each style has its particular characteristics, varying with colour palette, sense of light, type of brushstrokes, and the elements that form the focus of the composition.”
John Meyer’s landscapes fall firmly into the representational genre – he paints the landscapes as he (and the viewer) sees them. The term ‘photorealism’ speaks to a style where the artist rejects very personal, individualistic, painterly qualities, and instead strives to create images that look almost photographic. The works are characterised by visual complexity, heightened clarity and a desire to be emotionally neutral, the Tate art museum explains.
Meyer’s work has different layers and complexities that are infused with South African historical issues such as political tension, land ownership and restitution. His works can be interpreted as uncannily eerie, peacefully pastoral, or fraught with contention, depending on the viewer and their own personal background.
Mountain Landscape in Autumn.
Oil on board.
R 60 000 – 90 000.
A particular highlight of the Strauss & Co October Online-only auction is Hugo Naudé’s Mountain Landscape in Autumn, executed in warm tones of ochre, mustard, terracotta and muted greens. The artist is known as South Africa’s quintessential impressionist painter and renowned art historian Esmé Berman lauded him for his ability to focus on “the natural abundance of the verdant countryside around him”. Naudé often painted outdoors, or en plein air, like his stylistic predecessors, the French Impressionists. When a landscape artist works in an impressionistic style, the main focus is on the subjective way the landscape is experienced, the time of day, the way the light falls and influences their colour palette, the texture of the land, and the emotion it evokes, which is often conveyed in gestural, messy brushstrokes of contrasting colours.
Motopos.
Screenprint.
R 4 000 – 6 000.
Battiss’s bold prints are prime examples of abstract landscapes, where the artist does not attempt to represent an accurate depiction of visual reality, but rather uses shapes, colours, forms and gestural marks to achieve the effect. Although Battiss also worked in realistic and figurative styles, he drew great inspiration from French post-impressionist artists like Henri Matisse, who is considered one of the forerunners of abstract art.
The print Motopos only focuses on the essential – the mammoth ancient rock formations of the Matobo Hills, massive granite outcrops southeast of Bulawayo in Zimbabwe. The artwork also reflects Battiss’s interest in the rock art in the area – the human and animal figures created hundreds and possibly thousands of years ago by the San and Khoekhoe peoples who inhabited the area.
Strauss & Co once’s upcoming October online-only sale opens on Monday, 18 Oct 2021 and closes at 8:00pm on Monday, 25 Oct 2021.
For more information, go to the Strauss & Co website at www.straussart.co.za or contact the Johannesburg office at (011) 728 8246 or jhb@straussart.co.za
Notes:
https://perspectiveart.co.za/product-category/dzunisani-maluleke/
https://www.straussart.co.za/artists/hugo-naude
Esmé Berman (1983) Art & Artists of South Africa, Cape Town: AA Balkema, page 304.
